Meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council

The FDIC remains hard at work to improve its supervisory and regulatory approach across an array of issues, while still continuing to fulfill our core mission of insuring deposits, promoting the safety and soundness of banks, and resolving failed institutions.

At the last FSOC meeting in September, I detailed a number of actions we had taken earlier this year, or were planning to take in the coming months, to execute on these goals.¹

Since September, our progress has continued, including:

• Issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR), jointly with the OCC, that would define "unsafe or unsound practice" for purposes of Section 8 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act and "matters requiring attention" (MRAs), and set up a new framework for issuing nonbinding supervisory observations;²
• Issuing an NPR, jointly with the OCC, that would prohibit examiners from (1) criticizing or taking adverse action against banks on the basis of reputational risk or (2) requiring, instructing, or encouraging an institution to close accounts or take certain other actions on the basis of a customer's political, social, cultural, or religious views or beliefs, among other reasons;³
• Rescinding Biden-era guidance on climate-related financial risks;⁴
• Issuing a final rule raising and indexing 37 asset-based thresholds, most of which apply to audit, internal control, and related reporting requirements, providing meaningful relief for community banks;⁵
• Issuing an NPR, jointly with the OCC and Federal Reserve, that would amend the Community Bank Leverage Ratio (CBLR) to expand the universe of eligible institutions and encourage broader adoption;⁶
• Issuing a final rule, jointly with the OCC and Federal Reserve, to modify the enhanced supplementary leverage ratio, to ensure it more frequently serves as a backstop to risk-based capital standards;⁷
• Launching a number of initiatives to improve our resolution capabilities, including a pilot program for expanded nonbank participation in the failed bank bidding process;⁸
  Implementing a revised examination cycle that reduces the frequency of compliance examinations for most small banks;⁹
• Conducting reviews of potential debanking in response to the President's Executive Order on politicized or unlawful debanking;¹⁰ and
• Withdrawing from the 2013 interagency leveraged lending guidance, replacing it with general principles for safe and sound lending, to promote more bank lending to businesses that drive economic growth.¹¹

We continue to have a busy agenda for the upcoming months, which includes additional steps to reform supervision, such as CAMELS reform and updates to our examination manuals; implementation of the GENIUS Act; a reproposal of the 2017 Basel agreement; and an interagency proposal to reform the BSA Program Rule, among many other items.

I thank my fellow Council members for their continued collaboration on these and other issues, and Secretary Bessent for his leadership.