Since the 1980s US banking authorities and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS, located in Basel, Switzerland), have received aggregate large trader positions from CFTC, on a monthly basis, of bank participation in various financial and non-financial commodities. Since the BIS used some of the CFTC aggregates in its own publications, beginning in the late ‘90s these “Bank Participation Reports” (BPR) were posted for public access on the CFTC website.

Separate reports are generated for futures and for gross options (not delta adjusted). The as-of date of the monthly BPR is the first business Tuesday of each calendar month, and publication on cftc.gov occurs by the following Thursday or Friday. A minimum of 5 entities classified as a bank in any commodity market is necessary for the commodity to be included in the BPR. This differs from the weekly Commitments of Traders Report (COT) where a minimum of 20 traders is required and classified as either commercial or non-commercial in any commodity for the commodity to be included in the report. The BPR is based on the same large trader reporting system database that CFTC economists use to monitor large trader activity in the regulated futures and options markets, and which also is used to generate the weekly COT report. The two BPR trader classifications, “US commercial bank” and non-US commercial bank,” are based on the self-description of a trading entity on its CFTC Form 40, filed upon first becoming reportable, and every two years a trader remains reportable, or more frequently upon CFTC request.
Although CFTC analysts may override a given self-description, as a practical matter this is infrequently done.

A given entity may have subsidiaries that are “US commercial bank,” plus “non US commercial bank,” plus non-bank subsidiaries, each of which could be a reportable trader. Each separate reportable trader, files a separate CFTC Form 40. If the reportable trader is “commercially engaged in business activities hedged by use of the futures or option markets,” it enumerates its business activities on Schedule 1 of the Form 40. If on that Schedule the reportable trader describes itself as a “US commercial bank” or as a “non-US commercial bank” in any one commodity, that designation applies to its positions in all commodities published in the BPR. Only traders that are classified as either a US commercial bank or a non-US commercial bank are reported in the BPR.

The CFTC does not maintain a history of BPR data except for the rolling most recent 25 months posted on cftc.gov.