On January 30, the five regulators responsible for Section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (the “Volcker Rule”) each approved a set of amendments intended to modify and clarify the covered fund provisions of the regulations implementing the Volcker Rule. (The five regulators are the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.)
Continue Reading Volcker Rule Regulators Propose Changes to Covered Fund Rules

On January 9, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) (together known as the Banking Agencies) published proposed rules in the Federal Register that are designed to make the regulatory framework related to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) more “objective, transparent, consistent, and easy to understand” (Proposal). The last major revisions to the CRA were made in 1995.
Continue Reading OCC and FDIC Release Proposed Revisions to Community Reinvestment Act

On December 3, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the National Credit Union Administration (the Banking Agencies) released interagency guidance related to the use of alternative data for purposes of underwriting credit (the Guidance).
Continue Reading US Banking Agencies Issue Statement on Alternative Date in Credit Underwriting

On October 24, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) joined the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission in announcing that it will be joining the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN). The GFIN was formed to establish a framework for cooperation among financial services regulators on innovation-related topics and a vehicle for sharing different experiences and approaches. It also seeks to provide a more efficient way for innovative firms to interact with regulators and navigate among jurisdictions as they look to scale new ideas.
Continue Reading CFTC, Among Other US Financial Regulatory Agencies, Joins the Global Financial Innovation Network

On September 17, the directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) approved a joint notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) with respect to the prudential regulator margin rules for non-cleared swaps. The joint form of the NPR indicates that the other prudential swap regulators (the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Farm Credit Administration and the Federal Housing Finance Agency) will all be approving the same NPR in the near future.
Continue Reading FDIC Proposes Amendments to Prudential Regulator Swap Margin Rules

On August 20, the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) approved their version of a set of amendments intended to simplify some of the requirements of the regulations implementing Section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (the “Volcker Rule”), which was enacted as Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Volcker Rule generally prohibits banking entities from engaging in proprietary trading and from owning or controlling hedge funds or private equity funds subject to numerous qualifications and exemptions set forth in the Volcker Rule regulations, which are identical sets of rules adopted by each of the Volcker Rule regulators (the FDIC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the Securities and Exchange Commission). These final amendments incorporate the responses of the Volcker Rule regulators to the numerous comments they received when they initially proposed a set of amendments in 2018.
Continue Reading FDIC Approves Amendments to the Volcker Rule

On April 29, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Chris Giancarlo sent a letter to Randy Quarles, the Vice Chair for Supervision of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in which he proposed that the US regulators responsible for the administering the margin rules for uncleared swaps should collaborate in providing some relief to non-dealer swap market participants who may become subject to initial margin requirements in 2020. The specific relief would be the issuance of the same guidance issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) in March (for more information, see the March 8, 2019 edition of Corporate & Financial Weekly Digest), which stated that in-scope parties do not have to put in place compliant documentation and custodial relationships if there is no expectation that the exposure associated with their swaps will actually exceed the regulatory threshold for posting initial margin ($50 million for the United States).
Continue Reading CFTC Chair Proposes Relief for Phase 5 Initial Margin Implementation

On March 15, the five US regulators (the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Farm Credit Administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) that are responsible for the margin rules for uncleared swaps that apply to prudentially regulated swap dealers adopted an interim final rule designed to ensure that qualifying swaps may be transferred from a UK entity to an affiliate in the European Union or the United States without triggering new margin requirements.
Continue Reading Banking Regulators Adopt Swap Margin Safe Harbor

On July 17, the Federal Register published proposed changes to the Volcker Rule that were jointly approved by the Federal Reserve Board, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Securities and Exchange Commission. As described in greater detail in the June 1,

On June 7, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued frequently asked questions (FAQs) to supplement OCC Bulletin 2013-29, “Third-Party Relationships: Risk Management Guidance,” which was originally issued on October 30, 2013. These FAQs address questions from national banks and federal savings associations. The FAQs and underlying OCC Bulletin 2013-29 apply to