Ebrima Santos Sanneh

The Financial Stability Oversight Council Wednesday published a proposed guidance focused on designating activities rather than individual firms for heightened prudential standards, making it more difficult for the council to designate firms going forward.

Speaking at the Digital Asset Summit, the Comptroller of the Currency argued that part of his goal in shifting the agency's posture toward the crypto industry is to allow smaller financial institutions to engage in novel technologies, which he said will keep banks relevant.

The reported reversal comes after the industry worried verifying citizenship would strain banks and push customers out of the system.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. rolled back a 2009 policy that banned nonbanks from buying failed banks, a move the agency says aims to widen the bidder pool and cut failure costs.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Travis Hill said in remarks Wednesday that privacy and know-your-customer gaps remain for banks that work with public, permissionless blockchains, and that the agency may need to clarify how banks can interact with them. 

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould encouraged the audience at a crypto conference Tuesday to weigh in on the agency's GENIUS Act implementation rule and said a separate anti-money laundering proposal from OCC and Treasury would be coming soon.

A coalition of Democratic attorneys general, led by California and Illinois, have sued the Department of Housing and Urban Development over a guidance that they argue will scale back enforcement to strict federal standards and threaten state funding to enforce fair housing laws.

Federal bank enforcement actions have dropped sharply since the start of the second Trump administration, but experts' views vary about whether less enforcement will result in a buildup of risk in the financial system.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said one of the early messages he is hearing from banks and supervisors revolves around an uneven playing field between small banks and their core providers, but suggested formal rules to address the problem are not imminent.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Travis Hill said in a speech Wednesday morning that the agency will move to codify stablecoins as ineligible for deposit insurance — which is required under the GENIUS Act — and that the prohibition likely will include pass-through deposit insurance arrangements.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February while unemployment held steady at 4.4%, a development that could spur the Federal Reserve to question whether interest rates are truly in balance.

The bank exited the $1.95-trillion asset cap last year, but it had remained subject to the rest of the eight-year-old order.

While the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's recently published stablecoin rule bars stablecoin issuers from offering yield on holdings, there is enough wiggle room in the proposal — and unfinished business in Congress and the courts — for rewards to ultimately be accepted.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized rules rescinding fair housing data requirements and expanding speedy licensing for banks under $30B in assets as part of Comptroller Jonathan Gould's push for more risk-based supervision.

A final rule published by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Friday will formalize a 2021 interpretive guidance allowing national trust banks to perform non-fiduciary custody. The banking industry complained that the rule runs counter to the traditional scope of the charter. 

The agency's 400-page GENIUS Act proposal sets capital, reserve and operational rules to govern how stablecoin issuers may operate. 

The heads of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and National Credit Union Administration, as well as the Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision, will testify in the Senate Thursday morning in their first joint appearance in the upper chamber since being confirmed.

Banks, trade groups and regulators are eligible to join a group convened by Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or Fincen, which will weigh in on anti-money-laundering rules, Bank Secrecy Act modernization and implementation of a recently passed stablecoin bill.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report shows margins widened and profitability remained high even as credit quality saw some wobbles from consumer and commercial loan portfolios. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a public appearance in Dallas Friday that the administration will seek alternative means of enacting the White House's tariff agenda after the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs as outside the bounds of the law.