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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

Agencies announce several resolution plan actions

Federal Issues Federal Reserve FDIC Living Wills Agency Rule-Making & Guidance Supervision Of Interest to Non-US Persons

Federal Issues

On December 9, the FDIC and Federal Reserve Board announced several resolution plan actions, including providing finalized guidance for the resolution plans of four large foreign banking organizations (FBOs). Pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act, FBOs must submit resolution plans—also known as “living wills”—which detail the strategic plans for their U.S. operations and subsidiaries for rapid and orderly resolution in bankruptcy in the event that the banks fail or fall under material financial distress. The final guidance modifies the proposed updates issued last March (covered by InfoBytes here) in several ways. Among other changes, the agencies “tailored their expectations around resolution capital and liquidity, derivatives and trading activity, as well as payment, clearing, and settlement activities,” and modified the scope of the guidance “to generally cover foreign banks in category II of the agencies' large bank regulatory framework.” As a result, three FBOs would be subject to the guidance for their plan submissions for 2021, and an additional FBO would be subject to the guidance for its full plan due in 2024 if it remains within the scope. The agencies also released information for 15 large foreign and domestic banks in categories II and III of the large bank regulatory framework that identifies required targeted information to be included in their next resolutions plans, due December 17, 2021. The agencies also confirmed that certain previously identified weaknesses in four FBOs have been remediated.