Office of the Comptroller of the Currency June 2020 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The OCC, Board, FDIC, Commission, FHFA, and HUD (the agencies) are providing notice of the extension of the period for the review, and publication of determination of the review, of the definition of qualified residential mortgage; the community-focused residential mortgage exemption; and the exemption for qualifying three-to-four unit residential mortgage loans, in each case as currently set forth in the Credit Risk Retention Regulations (as defined below) as adopted by the agencies.

On May 28, 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published in the Federal Register an interim final rule to revise its regulations on activities and operations of national banks and corporate activities of Federal savings associations to provide that these institutions may permit telephonic and electronic participation at all board of directors, shareholder, and as applicable, member, meetings. This correcting amendment makes a correction to those interim regulations.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is adopting a final rule to strengthen and modernize the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) by clarifying and expanding the activities that qualify for CRA credit; updating where activities count for CRA credit; creating a more consistent and objective method for evaluating CRA performance; and providing for more timely and transparent CRA-related data collection, recordkeeping, and reporting.

In light of recent disruptions in economic conditions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 and strains in U.S. financial markets, the OCC, the Board, and the FDIC (together, the agencies) are issuing an interim final rule that temporarily revises the supplementary leverage ratio calculation for depository institutions. Under the interim final rule, any depository institution subsidiary of a U.S. global systemically important bank holding company or any depository institution subject to Category II or Category III capital standards may elect to exclude temporarily U.S. Treasury securities and deposits at Federal Reserve Banks from the supplementary leverage ratio denominator. Additionally, under this interim final rule, any depository institution making this election must request approval from its primary Federal banking regulator prior to making certain capital distributions so long as the exclusion is in effect. The interim final rule is effective as of the date of Federal Register publication and will remain in effect through March 31, 2021. The agencies are adopting this interim final rule to allow depository institutions that elect to opt into this treatment additional flexibility to act as financial intermediaries during this period of financial disruption. The tier 1 leverage ratio is not affected by this interim final rule.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the National Credit Union Administration (collectively, the agencies) are issuing an interagency policy statement on allowances for credit losses (ACLs). The agencies are issuing this 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 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 debt securities in accordance with FASB ASC Topic 326; the design, documentation, and validation of expected credit loss estimation processes, including the internal controls over these processes; the maintenance of appropriate ACLs; the responsibilities of boards of directors and management; and examiner reviews of ACLs.