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By Katanga Johnson
Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg News) The Federal Reserve and other top U.S. regulators are forging ahead with their landmark plan to make big banks hold more capital despite calls from some critics to scrap it. online news
Key officials have decided to adjust the original proposal rather than starting over, and some of them are pushing to finalize it as soon as August, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing the internal deliberations. Tossing out the plan released last July would have almost certainly delayed finalization until after the November U.S. elections.
Speculation had been mounting that the Fed, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would redo the proposal entirely. Several lawmakers and regulators have raised concerns, while Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Michael Barr, the central bank’s top bank regulator, have said they expect “broad and material changes.”
Officials are still weighing the exact changes that will be made to last July’s draft plan and no firm date has been agreed upon for final approval.
Representatives for the FDIC and OCC declined to comment. “The Federal Reserve has made no decisions on timing, process, or substance,” the central bank said in a statement, after initially declining to comment.
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When asked during a press conference on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that decisions on process or policy for the rules hadn’t been made. “I’ll say again, though, if we conclude that re-proposal is appropriate, we won’t hesitate to insist on that,” he added.
Barr, the Fed official who is a chief driver of the effort, said in March that criteria related to operational, market and credit risks could be adjusted. Those measures and others help determine how much capital banks would need to hold under the plan.
Recent conversations
Recent conversations between senior officials at the Fed, FDIC and OCC have indicated some of the most meaningful changes to the proposal may come in how capital rules assess the level of risk related to a lender’s trading, wealth management and investment-banking activities, said some of the people familiar with the deliberations. Other areas might be addressed in the revised plan and become a focus for officials ahead of its release.
The U.S. effort is tied to the Basel III international agreement that started more than a decade ago after the financial crisis. Supporters have also billed it as a fix for some of the issues exposed by the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. But banks have argued they are already well-capitalized to withstand a crisis and that the proposed changes would ultimately hurt consumers.
Industry groups have spent months waging a fierce lobbying campaign that has featured appearances by chief executive officers testifying in Congress, television spots during sports games and a barrage of comments submitted against the plan.
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Under the July 2023 proposal, the largest U.S. banks would face about a 19% increase in how much capital they must hold to buffer against losses, with lenders between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets seeing as little as 5% more, according to government estimates.
Although officials are planning notable changes, U.S. administrative law requires that they not depart too significantly from what was proposed. The decision to ultimately move ahead with a version to be based on the original proposal could reduce the impact of a potential consolidation of power in November by Republicans, many of whom have signaled support for the banking industry’s arguments.
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Fed Critics
Fed Governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller are among the critics who have taken issue with how the original plan assessed various types of risks at banks. It’s unclear whether the changes to the original proposal, some of which are still in flux, will allay their concerns.
In a sign that regulators are advancing in their push to finalize the plan, officials are preparing to release as soon as next week a compilation of data from banks on how the changes could affect aspects of their businesses, according to some of the people. That so-called Quantitative Impact Study, which collected year-end 2023 data from the nation’s eight largest banks, is supposed to help the Fed weigh the relative costs and benefits of each aspect of the proposed rule and the regulation as a whole.
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