Banking Regulators rescind interagency policies related to large banks’ management of climate-related financial risks. The Banking Agencies are supposed to focus on their mission to identify and ensure mitigation of all risks regardless of source, origin, or ideology. Politicizing and undermining the safety, soundness, and stability of the banking system and the economy by picking and choosing only some risks does not make the risks go away. On the contrary, it ensures that those risks will increase and spread, almost certainly exploding in the future when banks and policymakers are unprepared and forced to undertake much more drastic actions than would have otherwise been required. This is not just regulators putting their head in the sand and ignorantly denying reality; it is an affirmative dereliction of duty and violation of their mandates to protect the banking system, the economy, and all Americans from all financial risks.

Read Better Markets’ statement here.

The OCC granted conditional approval to Erebor Bank, which “plans to target its products and services to technology companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that utilize virtual currencies.”

This decision is a clear indication of the OCC’s openness to and encouragement of new banking industry entrants with a focus on digital assets. This has prompted several other crypto bank applications to the OCC, including Sony and Stripe.

FDIC bank supervisors will no longer identify reputation risk at banks, bending to the demands of the Trump Administration. The Trump Administration and the regulatory agencies claim that the change in supervisory focus will enable fair access for all to the banking industry. But their real goal is to blindfold and handcuff banking supervisors, which will inevitably result in unethical and dangerous actors gaining access to banks for funding.

Read Better Markets’ statement here.

FDIC and OCC will limit what is considered an unsafe or unsound banking practice to just things that relate to a bank’s financial condition, with the notice of proposed rulemaking approved today.

With this rule, bank supervisors will now be constrained and limited in using Matters Requiring Attention (“MRAs”) to identify, document, and stop dangerous activity at banks.

The American people rely on bank supervision experts at the FDIC and other federal banking regulatory agencies to recognize and take action to stop dangerous activities that threaten the stability of banks and the financial system. Doing that job well requires them to be on heightened alert for new, novel, untested, unknown, and potentially dangerous risks, whether they affect a bank’s financial condition today or not. The FDIC’s record of doing that has made it the gold standard in protecting Americans’ savings. Today’s action threatens that gold standard and will directly undermine FDIC supervisors from doing their jobs, and all Americans will pay the price.

The OCC took action to reduce regulatory burden for community banks by limiting the information that supervisors will require or assess during regular bank examinations.

The OCC took action to limit certain bank supervision activities and issued two notices of proposed rulemaking that would reduce data collection and reduce oversight for bank merger applications. We strongly support reducing regulatory burden for community banks. However, the OCC’s threshold for “community banks” for these actions is $30 billion in total assets. This is three times larger than the Federal Reserve’s $10 billion community bank threshold and not at all aligned with the FDIC’s definition of community banks, which includes factors such as lending activity and branch geography.

Only about 70 banks have more than $30 billion in total assets, so the OCC’s actions are actually broad deregulatory changes that will affect nearly every bank in the country, but are being disguised as targeted policies to help for community banks specifically.

The CFPB finalized extension of compliance for its Small Business Lending Rule implementing the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which requires that certain financial institutions collect and report to the CFPB certain data regarding applications for credit for women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses.

The data collected under the rule will be an essential tool in creating a fairer and more equitable financial system for all Americans, including those who have historically been shut out of the opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship.