The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency continues to revamp how it supervises financial institutions and monitor risks to their safety and soundness. A plan announced this week advances a previously announced strategy to reduce the number of on-site examiners at big banks and reassign top experts to industry-wide risk reviews.
The OCC supervises approximately 1,800 institutions. The large bank supervision program has approximately 620 examiners, the midsize bank program has approximately 130 examiners, and the community bank program has 1,700. The catalyst for rethinking how these examiners are deployed was an external report commissioned by the OCC and released in December 2013. It was prepared by a team of current and former senior supervisory personnel from Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the International Monetary Fund.The review flagged numerous concerns with the current examination process. Those issues include: a high proportion of examiners are at or near retirement age; a significant number of new rules and policies need to be put in place because of the Dodd-Frank Act, Basel Committee on Bank Supervision, and the Financial Stability Board; and that the OCC must navigate multiple federal and state regulatory agencies with overlapping responsibilities.
