Bank Registry Grounding Data

Overview

A bank lookup API for KYB, payments and vendor onboarding. One registry joins the FDIC BankFind data (all ~28,000 bank charters, active, merged, failed and closed) with NCUA credit union filings, then attaches the routing numbers and SWIFT codes we hold for each active institution. Every match carries its status and status date, the establishment date, headquarters address and coordinates, website, regulator, FDIC certificate or NCUA charter and RSSD id. Look up a routing number and routingCheck tells you whether it still belongs to an active institution. Look up an IBAN or a SWIFT code outside the US and you get the bank from our SWIFT directory. Paid plans add the successor for merged charters, failure details for failed banks, the LEI, quarterly total assets, deposits, net income and credit union membership, plus branches=true for the branch list.

Live Test Bank Registry Grounding Data Source →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveContext server, this appears in its tool list as BankRegistryGroundingData. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

{
  "name": "BankRegistryGroundingData",
  "arguments": {}
}

Connecting

One server URL covers every source in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervecontext": {
      "url": "https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

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{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "count": 1,
    "totalMatches": 3,
    "banks": [
      {
        "id": "fdic-3511",
        "name": "Wells Fargo Bank, National Association",
        "aliases": [
          "Crocker National Bank",
          "Crocker-Citizens National Bank",
          "Crocker-Anglo National Bank",
          "Crocker First National Bank of San Francisco"
        ],
        "type": "bank",
        "charterClass": "National bank (OCC)",
        "status": "active",
        "statusDate": null,
        "successor": null,
        "establishedDate": "1870-01-01",
        "foundedYear": 1870,
        "address": "3201 N 4th Ave",
        "city": "Sioux Falls",
        "state": "SD",
        "zip": "57104",
        "county": "Minnehaha",
        "country": "US",
        "latitude": 43.580844403981,
        "longitude": -96.722917126828,
        "coordinatesSource": "fdic",
        "website": "https://www.wellsfargo.com",
        "domain": "wellsfargo.com",
        "phone": null,
        "regulator": "OCC",
        "insurer": "FDIC",
        "fdicCert": 3511,
        "ncuaCharter": null,
        "rssdId": 451965,
        "lei": "KB1H1DSPRFMYMCUFXT09",
        "holdingCompany": "WELLS FARGO&COMPANY",
        "routingNumbers": [
          "121000248"
        ],
        "swiftCodes": [
          "WFBIUS6S"
        ],
        "branchCount": 4161,
        "totalAssets": 1907928000000,
        "totalDeposits": 1563534000000,
        "netIncomeYtd": 12808000000,
        "members": null,
        "financialsAsOf": "2026-06-30",
        "failure": null
      }
    ],
    "routingCheck": null,
    "ibanCheck": null
  }
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Why ground on it

A model can produce something that looks like this answer from its training data, and be confidently out of date or simply wrong. This source returns the current value in a shape you can check, which is the difference between an answer you can cite and one you have to hedge.

Point an evaluation at count: it is the field most worth pinning a claim to, and it is either present and current or absent — never plausibly invented.

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

A call costs 10 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

KYB and Vendor Onboarding

Confirm that the bank a business names is a real, insured institution that is still operating, and record its FDIC certificate or NCUA charter with the file.

Payment Instruction Checks

Before paying a new routing number, check that it belongs to an active institution and that its owner matches the bank named on the invoice.

Bank Merger Tracking

Map an old bank name on a cheque or statement to the institution that absorbed it, with the date of the merger.

Market Research

Rank banks and credit unions in a state by assets and branch count from quarterly regulatory filings.

Other ways to use Bank Registry Grounding Data

Set up Bank Registry Grounding Data on VerveContext, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveContext account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

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