FSOC

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen provided testimony to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs regarding the Financial Stability Oversight Committee (FSOC). She spoke about cryptocurrency, Russian sanctions, access to healthcare, the post-pandemic economy and cybersecurity.

Republicans on the committee were critical of what they considered the FSOC’s pursuit of a political agenda instead of focusing on “real risks” to the economy.

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President Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to examine the legal and economic ramifications of creating a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). The order sets a 180-day deadline for a series of reports on “the future of money.”

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council met earlier this month in executive session by telephone.

The highlight news coming from the meeting was the announcement that the council would begin an activities-based review of secondary mortgage market activities.

Read on for more details, and reaction from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria.

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As chairmen of the financial committees in Congress in 2010, Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank had their names go down in history when the financial reform package they authored was signed into law as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

A decade later, the two men sat down for a conversation about the impact of their work, how financial reform has been implemented and what remains to be done.

Read on for details from their assessments.

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Former Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen joined current Fed Gov. Lael Brainard and former Fed Gov. Jeremy Stein to discuss the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on the banking and financial services industry over the past 10 years.

Among the top takeaways from the discussion was Yellen’s desire for Congress to create a new Dodd-Frank Act.

Read on for details from their discussion.

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) conducted an executive session by phone May 14, as the council heard an update from the Task Force on Nonbank Mortgage Liquidity.

In a readout from the meeting, the FSOC said task force staff and federal regulators have continue to monitor potential risks, and are coordinating and sharing information among stakeholders.

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) recently voted unanimously to propose new interpretive guidance implementing an activities-based approach to designating non-bank entity as a systemically-important financial institution (SIFI).

The new approach would require the council to assess the potential risks an entity posed to the financial marketplace, conduct a cost-benefit analysis of such a designation and assess the likelihood that a non-bank entity would fail prior to finalizing a non-bank SIFI designation. 

Find out more details about proposed guidance.

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The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) has rescinded its 2013 decision to designate Prudential Financial, Inc., the largest life insurance company in the country, as a systemically-important financial institution (SIFI) under Section 113 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The lifting of Prudential’s SIFI designation leaves FSOC absent any nonbank entities to treat as systemically important.

Find out what factors the council took into consideration in making the decision.

 

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Determining that its market activities did not pose significant systemic economic risk, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) announced that Zions Bank will not be treated as a designated nonbank financial company upon completion of its merger with Zions Bancorporation.

In its final decision, FSOC noted arguments Zions stressed in a written submission advocating for the regulators not to subject the company to enhanced regulatory scrutiny reserved for large nonbank financial institutions, and argued that any two entities could structure a merger that subverted Section 117 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Find out more details about the merger and the council’s decision.

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The House recently passed a pair of bipartisan measures tweaking Federal Reserve stress tests and the process of determining which financial institutions should undergo the most rigorous testing.

H.R. 4061, otherwise known as the “Financial Stability Oversight Council Improvement Act,” and H.R. 4293, also known as the “Stress Test Improvement Act of 2017,” seek to address concerns expressed on both sides of the political aisle.

Find out more about more about what the two bills could mean for nonbank financial companies supervised by the Fed.

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