OTS Issues How-To Rules on Obtaining Failed Thrifts' Exams and Other

WASHINGTON - You're in a lawsuit involving a failed savings and loan. To prove your case, you need a crucial bit of information that can be gleaned only from a confidential examiner's report.

Getting it won't be easy. But now, thanks to a regulation issued last week by the Office of Thrift Supervision, you can at least find out how to go about trying.

The procedure will work like this: Anyone seeking data from an examiner's report or other unpublished document "must list the categories of records sought and describe the specific information sought," show that the information sought isn't available elsewhere, and demonstrate that the need for it "clearly outweighs the need to maintain the confidentiality of the OTS information."

These are pretty much the procedures that the thrift agency has been following up to now. The agency decided to issue a regulation because of the sheer volume of requests. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. may follow in its footsteps.

"We've had hundreds of requests ... from people because of all these failed thrifts, so we've been first" said OTS chief counsel Carolyn Block. "We have to be very careful of the kinds of information that we might release."

Concern about the confidentiality of exams spurred some in the thrift industry to complain to the agency's releasing any information at all would have a chilling effect on the examination process. In issuing the final rule, the agency responded: "OTS has been following these practices for several years, and its experience indicates that the integrity of the examination process will not in any way be compromised by this rule."

Dawn Causey, regulatory counsel for America's Community Bankers, had no major concerns regarding the new rule's impact on exam confidentiality. But she said its focus on litigants shortchanged another group that needs to look at exam reports - acquirers of thrifts.

"What is a little bit frustrating is that this is clearly a litigation- driven regulation," she said. "They've forgotten what else it impacts."

Ms. Causey did applaud a provision in the regulation allowing thrifts and their holding companies to exchange exam reports.

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