The Filing Cabinet

The Financial Stability Oversight Council has de-designated AIG as a systemically important financial institution, a classification that had placed heightened prudential standards and regulatory expectations upon the non-bank.

President Donald Trump’s regulatory rollback will include an FSOC review of financial rules and a review of the Labor Department’s “fiduciary duty” rule that could ultimately lead to its demise. Joe Mont explores.

Round two of the fight between insurance giant MetLife and the government over its status as a systemically important financial institution heads to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Oct. 24 for oral arguments. Joe Mont reports.

GE Capital Global Holdings is no longer a threat to financial stability,says the Financial Stability Oversight Council. While MetLife prevailed in a lawsuit to shed its designation as a non-bank systemically important financial institution, GE Capital did so by working within the agencies appeals framework. Joe Mont reports.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council has approved and released its 2016 annual report. Delivered each year to Congress, it addresses a range of issues, including financial market and regulatory developments and potential emerging threats to financial stability. Joe Mont explores.

Bringing a measure of transparency to its often secretive deliberations, the Financial Stability Oversight Council has released a public update on its review of potential risks to U.S. financial stability. Topping that list, beyond its controversial designations of banks and nonbanks as systemically important, are concerns about asset management products and activities. 

One day after a federal judge revoked MetLife’s designation as a “systemically important financial institution” by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, GE—specifically the wholly owned subsidiary GE Capital—is requesting that it also be able to shed the classification and increased regulatory demands that come with being “too big to fail.”

A federal judge has sided with insurance giant MetLife in its effort to remove the “systematically important financial institution” designation placed upon it in 2014 by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The ruling is unlikely to mark the end of the battle as the government has the option of either filing an appeal or re-embarking on the SIFI designation process in light of the judge’s concerns.

The House Financial Services Committee has approved a slate of bills at one of its favorite bureaucratic targets, the Financial Stability Oversight Council. The FSOC Improvement Act, if adopted, would allow financial firms to eliminate risk through changes to their business model before being designated as Systemically Important Financial Institutions. More inside.

The International Association of Insurance Supervisors seeks to impose new capital standards upon systemically important insurance companies, echoing mandates from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The effort has irked the Financial Services Roundtable, which is urging U.S. regulators to oppose it. Who enforces any new standards is also unclear. More inside.

What will it take to be de-designated as a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Oversight Council? We may need to waitlonger for the answer to that burning question as, despite a restructuring that will slice away most of its financing arm, General Electric was not yet able to shed its SIFI tag at an anual review last week.

A small Texas bank scored a potentially big victory last week when a federal appeals court ruled that it has standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The decision, overturning a 2013 district court ruling, rejected a similar challenge to the Financial Stability Oversight Council and its process for determining systemically important financial institutions. More inside.

The thesis of a new report from the International  Monetary Fund is hardly shocking. Despite progress, the U.S. must finish the work begun on financial reforms, it concludes. More telling is an assessment of what new areas systemic risk has bubbled into and how regulators should respond. Greater attention must be paid to non-banks, especially insurance companies, it says. The IMF also warns that, when scaling oversight, not to forget that "previous episodes of crisis originated in small and medium banks.”

As it sues the Financial Stability Oversight Council in federal court over its designation as a Systemically Important Financial Institution, MetLife is demanding that its lawyers have access to nearly 500 pages of redacted and unreleased agency documents, many of them otherwise shielded because of references to other companies. More inside.

MetLife has filed a lawsuit to undo its designation as a non-bank systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Although CEO Steven Kandarian said the company had hoped to avoid litigation, it marks the first time a too-big-to-fail designation has been challenged before a federal judge.

To the surprise of no one, including the company itself, the Financial Stability Oversight Council has designated Metlife, the nation’s largest insurance company, as a Systemically Important Financial Institution, subjecting it to new regulatory, disclosure, and capital demands. MetLife has 30 days to decide whether to ask a federal judge to review the decision.