How should financial institutions gather crime history data for risk assessments?

Crime history data for risk assessments can be gathered through subscription-based intelligence services like CAP Index, which provide localized crime statistics and trend analysis, or through open-source resources such as local law enforcement crime report databases. CSG recommends combining both sources to get the most accurate risk picture for each location.

CAP Index and similar services provide standardized crime scores for specific geographic areas, making it easy to compare risk levels across multiple branch locations and benchmark against national or regional averages. These services aggregate crime data from law enforcement databases and apply predictive modeling to generate forward-looking risk scores — useful both for assessing current locations and for evaluating potential new branch sites.

Open-source law enforcement data — available through most city and county police department websites and federal resources like the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting database — provides ground-level incident data that can validate or contextualize subscription service scores. For institutions conducting their own risk assessments, CSG recommends pulling both data types for each location and focusing specifically on crime types most relevant to financial institutions: robbery, burglary, ATM theft, and vehicle-ramming incidents.