All Things FinReg

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve) took another tepid step into the digital asset space on August 8, announcing that it has established a program to “enhance the supervision of novel activities conducted by banking organizations supervised” by the Federal Reserve. In addition, the Federal Reserve issued guidance explaining the supervisory nonobjection process for state member banks “seeking to engage in certain activities involving tokens denominated in national currencies and issued using distributed ledger technology or similar technologies to facilitate payments.”

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) continued the focus shown over the last several months, and especially since the March 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and associated events, by the federal banking agencies on uninsured deposits when it issued a Financial Institution Letter (FIL), Estimated Uninsured Deposits Reporting Expectations, on July 24, 2023.

Congress has enacted and President Joseph Biden has signed a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC’s) “true lender” rule, which, as we previously discussed, had provided that a national bank is as a matter of law the lender on any loan for which it is the named lender or for which it provides the loan funding.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a final rule on June 25 that reaffirms the enforceability of the interest rate terms of loans made by state-chartered banks and insured branches of foreign banks (collectively, state banks) following the sale, assignment, or transfer of the loan. The rule also provides that whether interest on a loan is permissible is determined at the time the loan is made, and is not affected by a change in state law, a change in the relevant commercial paper rate, or the sale, assignment, or other transfer of the loan. The final rule follows the FDIC’s proposed rule on this topic, and will take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.