Title II

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a final rule to dramatically increase the threshold for national banks and federal savings associations to be covered by the OCC’s Dodd-Frank Act stress testing.

The agency considered recommendations pertaining to the testing requirements and the frequency with which the tests are conducted.

Read on for more information about the rule, which aligns with financial reform legislation passes last year.

The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) recently completed their 2018 resolution plan evaluations for several systemically-important foreign and domestic banks and extended the next deadline for those firms to submit their strategies for rapid, orderly liquidation in the event of a failure.

The extensions are intended to afford the banks additional preparation time to account for pending amendments to resolution planning rules, affecting domestic banks and foreign banks with U.S. operations with more than $100 billion in total consolidated assets.

Find out more details about the plan assessments and deadline extensions.  

The results of the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Dodd-Frank Act stress test (DFAST) indicated that the nation’s largest bank holding companies are well-equipped to handle a severe financial downturn should one occur.

The number of firms participating in the 2019 DFAST is roughly half the number that participated in 2018, thanks to the passage of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (EGRRCPA) in May 2018.

Find out more details about the first half of the latest stress test results.

The Federal Reserve recently proposed several changes to its resolution planning framework for large banking companies that would reduce the frequency with which certain banks would be required to submit “living wills.” Institutions now required to file full living wills every year would have to do so only once every four or six years under the proposal.

The Fed also has proposed new regulatory capital requirements for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign banking organizations.

Find out more details about the proposal.

In what would be the largest bank merger by asset and deposit volume since the financial crisis, SunTrust Banks, Inc. and BB&T Corp. recently announced they’d agreed to a $66 billion deal that would combine both companies to form the sixth-largest bank by asset size in the country.

The merger was announced two days after the Federal Reserve informed both banks they would not be required to comply with certain stress testing requirements, invoking its ability to do so for banks with less than $250 billion in assets under S. 2155.

Find out more details about the deal and what congressional hurdles could slow the closing process.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is considering policy changes to streamline and strengthen the resolution planning process for large banks, as well as changes to its Orderly Liquidation Authority.

The agency also is considering changes to thresholds associated with its insured depository institutions (IDIs) rule and will not require banks to file IDI plans until its rule revisions are finalized.

Learn what Chairman Jelena McWilliams believes should be guiding principles behind any potential rule changes.

An online student loan provider’s recent decision to withdraw its bid to become a chartered industrial loan company (ILC) represents the third instance of such a retraction by a fintech in a little more than a year.

Nelnet Inc., an online student loan servicer, released a statement indicating that the company may consider reapplying for an ILC charter with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions in the future.

Find out why the Independent Community Bankers of America stands opposed to such charters.

For the second straight quarter, banks enjoyed record profits, as reported by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in its Quarterly Banking Profile.

The latest report indicated that FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions saw more than $60 billion in aggregate profits in the second quarter of 2018, a 25.1 percent increase from the previous year. The FDIC attributed the profit gains to higher net interest income and the lower effective tax rate instituted by the new tax law enacted in 2017 by President Donald Trump.

Find out more details about the record-setting quarter.

The federal banking agencies have issued interim final rules expanding the 18-month on-site examination cycle to cover more insured depository institutions, U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks.

The expansion is authorized by the recently enacted the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

Find out specifics about what institutions will be impacted by the new interim rules.

The third fintech company to vie for a bank charter with both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and Utah regulators in little more than a year also recently became the third to encounter expressed opposition from community bankers.

Weeks after Nelnet, a Nebraska-based student lender, made its bid to form a Utah-chartered industrial loan corporation (ILC), the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) urged the FDIC to deny the company’s request and impose a two-year moratorium on future ILC applications, as it did in response to SoFi’s application in June 2017 and Square’s that September.

Find out more details about why ICBA opposes ILC charters.