Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen Delivers Semi-Annual Report on Supervision and Regulation

Federal Reserve Community Banks Bank Supervision Risk Management

On November 4, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen testified before the House Committee on Financial Services. The topic of Chair Yellen’s testimony was “the lessons of the financial crisis and how we have transformed our regulatory and supervisory approach.” She explained that, prior to the crisis, the Fed’s “primary goal was to ensure the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions” and that, since the crisis, the Fed’s aim has been to regulate and supervise “in a manner that promotes the stability of the financial system as a whole.” Yellen went on to explain that the regulatory approaches adopted to address both large financial institutions and companies and community banks have been different.  According to Yellen, with respect to the large financial institutions, the Fed’s approach is “oriented toward both the safety and soundness of the individual firms, and the stability of the financial system as a whole." With respect to community banks, Chair Yellen noted that the Fed’s supervisory approach is risk based: “[i]n supervising these institutions, we follow a risk-focused approach that aims to target examination resources to higher-risk areas of each bank’s operations and to ensure that banks maintain risk-management capabilities appropriate to their size and complexity.”