Office of the Comptroller of the Currency October 2019 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The OCC, the Board, and the Bureau are finalizing amendments to the official interpretations for their regulations that implement section 129H of the Truth in Lending Act (TILA). Section 129H of TILA establishes special appraisal requirements for ``higher-risk mortgages,'' termed ``higher-priced mortgage loans'' or ``HPMLs'' in the agencies' regulations. The OCC, the Board, the Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) (collectively, the Agencies) issued joint final rules implementing these requirements, effective January 18, 2014. The Agencies' rules exempted, among other loan types, transactions of $25,000 or less, and required that this loan amount be adjusted annually based on any annual percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). If there is no annual percentage increase in the CPI-W, the OCC, the Board, and the Bureau will not adjust this exemption threshold from the prior year. However, in years following a year in which the exemption threshold was not adjusted, the threshold is calculated by applying the annual percentage increase in the CPI-W to the dollar amount that would have resulted, after rounding, if the decreases and any subsequent increases in the CPI-W had been taken into account. Based on the CPI-W in effect as of June 1, 2019, the exemption threshold will increase from $26,700 to $27,200, effective January 1, 2020.

In accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974, the Department of the Treasury (``Treasury'' or the ``Department''), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, proposes to modify a system of records titled, ``Department of the Treasury, Office of the Comptroller .220 Notices of Proposed Changes in Employees, Officers and Directors Tracking SystemTreasury/Comptroller.'' This electronic system, is used to maintain the applications, background materials, and tracking information related to applications submitted by OCC-regulated entities for approval of employees, proposed directors or senior executive officers of a national bank, federal savings association, or federal branches of foreign banks; and requests from foreign banking supervisors for information about a former or existing employee of an OCC-regulated institution. Records in this system may be contained in an electronic system used by the OCC's Large Bank Supervision examiners or in an electronic system used by the OCC's Midsize and Community Bank supervision examiners, depending on the bank to which the records pertain. Additional copies of information may be contained in paper working files.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (collectively, the banking agencies), and the National Credit Union Administration (collectively, the agencies) are inviting public comment on a proposed interagency policy statement on allowances for credit losses (ACLs). The agencies are issuing this proposed interagency policy statement in response to changes to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) as promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-13, Financial InstrumentsCredit Losses (Topic 326): Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial Instruments and subsequent amendments issued since June 2016. These updates are codified in Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) Topic 326, Financial InstrumentsCredit Losses (FASB ASC Topic 326). This proposed interagency policy statement describes the measurement of expected credit losses under the current expected credit losses (CECL) methodology and the accounting for impairment on available-for-sale (AFS) debt securities in accordance with FASB ASC Topic 326; supervisory expectations for designing, documenting, and validating expected credit loss estimation processes, including the internal controls over these processes; maintaining appropriate ACLs; the responsibilities of boards of directors and management; and examiner reviews of ACLs.

The OCC, the Board, and the FDIC (collectively, the agencies) are requesting comment on ways to modify the current requirements for reporting data on loans to small businesses and small farms in the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income (Call Report) so that the reported data better reflect lending to these sectors of the U.S. economy.

The OCC, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on the renewal of an information collection, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA). In accordance with the requirements of the PRA, the OCC may not conduct or sponsor, and respondents are not required to respond to, an information collection unless it displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. The OCC is soliciting comment concerning the renewal of its information collection titled, ``OCC Supplier Registration Form.'' The OCC also is giving notice that it has sent the collection to OMB for review.

The OCC, the Board, and the FDIC (collectively, the agencies) are issuing a final rule that increases the thresholds in the major assets prohibition for management interlocks for purposes of the Depository Institution Management Interlocks Act (DIMIA). The DIMIA major assets prohibition prohibits a management official of a depository organization with total assets exceeding $2.5 billion (or any affiliate of such an organization) from serving at the same time as a management official of an unaffiliated depository organization with total assets exceeding $1.5 billion (or any affiliate of such an organization). DIMIA provides that the agencies may adjust, by regulation, the major assets prohibition thresholds in order to allow for inflation or market changes. The final rule increases both major assets prohibition thresholds to $10 billion to account for changes in the United States banking market since the current thresholds were established in 1996.

In accordance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), the OCC, the Board, and the FDIC (the ``agencies'') may not conduct or sponsor, and the respondent is not required to respond to, an information collection unless it displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), of which the agencies are members, has approved the agencies' publication for public comment of a proposal to revise and extend the Consolidated Reports of Condition and Income (Call Reports) (FFIEC 031, FFIEC 041, and FFIEC 051) and the Regulatory Capital Reporting for Institutions Subject to the Advanced Capital Adequacy Framework (FFIEC 101), which are currently approved collections of information. The proposed revisions to the Call Reports and the FFIEC 101 would implement various changes to the agencies' capital rule that the agencies have finalized or are considering finalizing. In addition, the agencies are proposing a change in the scope of the FFIEC 031 Call Report as well as an instructional revision for the reporting of operating lease liabilities in the Call Reports, both of which would take effect March 31, 2020, and a Call Report instructional revision for home equity lines of credit that convert from revolving to non-revolving status that would take effect March 31, 2021.