Regulators initiate regulatory lookback process

Federal banking regulators issued the first in a series of requests for comment on various aspects of the bank regulatory apparatus Tuesday, initiating a decennial review required under the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act of 1996.

The initial request for comment will focus on three of 12 categories of regulation: Applications and Reporting, Powers and Activities and International Operations. The agencies will accept public comment on ways those areas of regulation could be improved for 90 days following their publication in the Federal Register. The agencies will also conduct public outreach events as part of the EGRPRA process, the Federal Reserve said in a release.

“Over the next two years, the agencies will request comment on the regulations in the remaining categories, asking the public to identify regulations they believe are outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome,” the agency said. “The agencies also plan to hold outreach meetings where interested parties may comment on applicable regulatory requirements directly to the agencies.”

Federal Reserve Gov. Michelle Bowman, a Trump appointee and frequent critic of some of the Fed’s more recent regulatory proposals — including the Basel III endgame capital proposal and recently finalized Community Reinvestment Act implementation rules — said she hopes to hear from community banks in particular about how Fed rules impact small institutions. 

“It is my expectation that this review … will provide a meaningful process for stakeholders and the public to engage with the banking agencies in the identification of regulations that are no longer necessary or are overly burdensome,” Bowman said. “As a part of the comment solicitation process, I would also appreciate hearing from the public, particularly from community banks, about the aggregate burden that has been imposed since the prior EGRPRA report 10 years ago.”

The Fed most recently made recommendations pursuant to EGRPRA in 2017, which focused on not only regulatory but also supervisory burdens that could be made simpler. Part of that report included recommendations to clarify which Commercial Real Estate loans would be considered “high-volatility” and subject to higher risk weights for capital allocation purposes and raised the appraisal threshold for CRE loans from $250,000 to $400,000.

Banks have long complained that the EGRPRA process has amounted to a “check the box” exercise that does not yield meaningful changes in the regulatory regime despite detailed and substantive comments being submitted. This decennial review comes as the agencies are considering public comments on Basel III endgame, a proposal that has sparked uncommonly vocal opposition from banks.