Remarks
Governor Jerome H. Powell
At the Salzburg Global Seminar, Salzburg, Austria
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I will highlight five key areas of focus for regulatory reform. The first is simplification and recalibation of regulation of small and medium-sized banks. We are working to build on the relief we have provided in the areas of call reports and exam cycles, by developing a proposal to simplify the generally applicable capital framework that applies to community banking organizations.
The second area is resolution plans. The Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation believe that it is worthwhile to consider extending the cycle for living will submissions from annual to once every two years, and focusing every other of these filings on key topics of interest and material changes from the prior full plan submission. We are also considering other changes, as I discussed last week when testifying to Congress.
Third, the Federal Reserve is reassessing whether the Volcker rule implementing regulation most efficiently achieves its policy objectives, and we look forward to working with the other four Volcker rule agencies to find ways to improve that regulation. In our view, there is room for eliminating or relaxing aspects of the implementing regulation in ways that do not undermine the Volcker rule’s main policy goals.
Fourth, we will continue to enhance the transparency of stress testing and the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR). We will soon seek public feedback concerning possible forms of enhanced disclosure, including a range of indicative loss rates predicted by the Federal Reserve’s models for various loan and securities portfolios, and information about risk characteristics that contribute to the loss-estimate ranges. We will also provide more detail on the qualitative aspects of stress testing in next week’s CCAR disclosure.
Finally, the Federal Reserve is taking a fresh look at the enhanced supplementary leverage ratio. We believe that the leverage ratio is an important backstop to the risk-based capital framework, but that it is important to get the relative calibrations of the leverage ratio and the risk-based capital requirements right.
The full speech is available at https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20170626a.htm