InfoBytes Blog
Federal Reserve Issues Cease and Desist Order over Bank's Deposit-Gathering Practice
On June 13, the Federal Reserve issued a cease and desist order to a California-based savings and loan holding company and its wholly-owned, Indiana-based federal savings bank subsidiary. According to the Federal Reserve, between January 8, 2008 and March 5, 2010, the federal savings bank operated a deposit-gathering program (Program) pursuant to which it placed customer funds into deposit accounts at unaffiliated banks (Participating Banks) that had different maturities and different interest rates than those selected by customers under the Program. The Federal Reserve contends that the bank’s deposit-gathering practice was unsafe and unsound, and that the bank “was subject to liquidity risk because customers may have demanded the return of many or all of their deposits before the maturity dates negotiated by [the bank] with the Participating Banks, and/or [the bank] obtained less in interest from deposits at Participating Banks than it owed to customers for the deposit accounts they had selected.” Pursuant to the Federal Reserve’s cease and desist order, the savings and loan holding company and the federal savings bank must: (i) receive written approval from, and (ii) submit a business plan to the Federal Reserve (or the appropriate federal banking agency) prior to engaging in any deposit-gathering program.