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Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions extends relief provided to state-chartered financial institutions
On July 24, the Louisiana Office of Financial Institutions issued an emergency declaration continuing relief previously provided to Louisiana-chartered financial institutions, as provided in an earlier declaration previously covered here. Among other things, the declaration extends parity granted to loans made under the Main Street Lending Program established by the Federal Reserve System and loans made under the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program. The declaration also extends relief relating to temporary branch office closures, relocations, reduced operations, and annual meetings.
Fed changes supplementary leverage ratio rule to increase credit flow
On April 1, the Federal Reserve (Fed) released an interim final rule, which provides a short-term change to the calculation of the supplementary leverage ratio for holding companies (banks). This change temporarily allows banks to exclude their Treasury securities and Federal Reserve Bank deposits from the computation of the banks’ total assets, thus reducing the amount of capital the banks must maintain. The Fed suggested that the move will reduce the banks’ tier 1 capital requirements by around two percent, allowing them to take on more debt, resulting in an increase in available credit to households and businesses. The Fed stressed that it made this change to allow the banks to increase the flow of credit, and not to increase the banks’ capital distributions. The temporary change is effective immediately and will automatically revert on March 31, 2021. Comments on the rule must be submitted within 45 days of the announcement.
Federal agencies permit early adoption of standardized approach for counterparty credit risk
On March 26, the OCC, Federal Reserve System, and FDIC issued a notice permitting depository institutions and depository institution holding companies to implement the final rule titled Standardized Approach for Calculating the Exposure Amount of Derivative Contracts (SA-CCR rule) for the first quarter of 2020, on a best efforts basis. A banking organization that elects to adopt the SA-CCR methodology must adopt the methodology for all derivative contracts; a banking organization cannot implement the SA-CCR methodology for a subset of its derivative contracts. A banking organization may adopt some of the technical amendments described in the rule regardless of whether the banking organization chooses to early adopt the SA-CCR methodology. The SA-CCR rule effective date remains April 1, 2020, and the mandatory compliance date remains January 1, 2022.