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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

FDIC approves final stress-test revisions

Agency Rule-Making & Guidance FDIC OCC Stress Test EGRRCPA

Agency Rule-Making & Guidance

On October 15, the FDIC approved the final rule revising stress testing requirements for FDIC-supervised institutions, consistent with changes made by Section 401 of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act. The final rule remains unchanged from the proposed rule, which was issued by the FDIC in December 2018 (previously covered by InfoBytes here). The final rule (i) changes the minimum threshold for applicability from $10 billion to $250 billion; (ii) revises the frequency of required stress tests for most FDIC-supervised institutions from annual to biannual; and (iii) reduces the number of required stress testing scenarios from three to two.  FDIC-supervised institutions that are covered institutions will “be required to conduct, report, and publish a stress test once every two years, beginning on January 1, 2020, and continuing every even-numbered year thereafter.” The final rule also adds a new defined term, “reporting year,” which will be the year in which a covered bank must conduct, report, and publish its stress test. The final rule requires certain covered institutions to still conduct annual stress tests, but this is limited to covered institutions that are consolidated under holding companies required to conduct stress tests more frequently than once every other year. Lastly, the final rule removes the “adverse” scenario—which the FDIC states has provided “limited incremental information”—and requires stress tests to be conducted under the “baseline” and “severely adverse” stress testing scenarios. The final rule is effective thirty days after it is published in the Federal Register.

As previously covered by InfoBytes, on October 4, the OCC issued its final rule incorporating the same revisions as the FDIC.