Office of the Comptroller of the Currency March 30, 2012 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The OCC, Board, and the FDIC (collectively, the Agencies) request comment on proposed guidance on leveraged lending (proposed guidance). The proposed guidance outlines high-level principles related to safe and sound leveraged lending activities, including underwriting considerations, assessing and documenting enterprise value, risk management expectations for credits awaiting distribution, stress testing expectations and portfolio management, and risk management expectations. This proposed guidance would apply to all Federal Reserve-supervised, FDIC-supervised, and OCC-supervised financial institutions substantively engaged in leveraged lending activities. The number of community banking organizations with substantial exposure to leveraged lending is very small; therefore the Agencies generally expect that community banking organizations largely would be unaffected by this guidance.