InfoBytes Blog
Congress Acts on Several Banking Bills, Two Set for President's Signature
On December 11, the U.S. Senate passed by voice vote two bills impacting bank supervision and compliance. The first, H.R.4014, amends the Federal Deposit Insurance Act to protect information submitted to the CFPB as part of its supervisory process. The bill provides CFPB-supervised institutions the same non-waiver of privilege protections already afforded to information submitted by supervised entities to federal, state, and foreign banking regulators. For more information about these issues, please see our recent Special Alert. The second bill, H.R. 4367, amends the Electronic Fund Transfer Act to remove the requirement that ATMs have an attached placard disclosing fees. The amended law will require only that fees be disclosed on the ATM screen. Both bills previously were passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and now go to the President. On December 12, the House passed H.R. 5817, which would exempt from Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) annual privacy policy notice requirements any financial institution that (i) provides nonpublic personal information only in accordance with specified requirements, and (ii) has not changed its policies and practices with regard to disclosing nonpublic personal information from those included in its most recent disclosure. The bill now proceeds to the Senate. A fourth bill, S. 3637, which would extend the Transaction Account Guarantee program for two additional years, was blocked in the Senate on December 13, 2012. The program, which was established by the Dodd-Frank Act to provide unlimited deposit insurance for noninterest-bearing transaction accounts, will expire at the end of 2012 if legislators do not take further action to extend the program.