WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has named Morris Morgan as senior deputy comptroller and chief operating officer as part of a multimillion-dollar effort to revamp the agency.
Morgan, previously one of the top large-bank supervisors at the OCC, will fill the new role created by Comptroller Joseph Otting in his continuing efforts to change the agency's reporting structure. The move is a piece of a much larger project to streamline the OCC’s supervision processes.
The change will “result in greater coordination and integration of the agency’s bank supervision activities,” the OCC said in a press release naming Morgan to the role. “The changes also position the agency to operate in a more efficient and effective manner as it continuously works to enhance the supervision of the federal banking system.”
For the past year, Otting has been revamping the OCC, in part by cutting costs with suppliers and consolidating offices as well as restructuring management and keeping top
“The end result of that is we do think our cost structure will be down somewhere over $20 million year over year,” Otting said during a meeting with reporters Wednesday.
He added that the next step is to combine its supervisory activities into a “single supervisory platform,” an effort that will cost up to $150 million in the next 18 months.
“It’s a sizable amount of money,” Otting said. “However, we do think that also will bring some of the effectiveness and efficiencies to the agency that our payback can be" over a "relatively short period of time.”
All of the OCC’s bank supervision and policy, economics, compliance and community affairs as well as its innovation units will now report to Morgan as part of his new role. Morgan, who has been at the OCC for 34 years, held various positions in supervision and examination including being the examiner-in-charge at Bank of America and PNC.
He was previously senior deputy comptroller for large-bank supervision, overseeing banks with more than $10 trillion in assets collectively.
“Morris is a strong leader with deep supervision experience as the head of large bank supervision,” Otting said in the press release. “In this new role, he will promote even greater collaboration among the units directly involved in bank supervision and position the agency to supervise banks, savings associations, and federal branches even more successfully in the future.”
