OCC Releases Review of Efforts To Enhance Large Bank Supervision

WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today released a third-party review of its efforts to enhance the agency’s supervision of large and midsize national banks and federal savings associations.

The review assessed the OCC’s implementation of recommendations from the 2013 International Peer Review of the agency’s approach to supervising large and midsize institutions.  The assessment, as well as the original 2013 review, was conducted by senior regulators from Australia, Canada, and Singapore along with former staff of the International Monetary Fund.

“After three years of hard work implementing many of the recommendations made by our international peers, we invited the team back to evaluate our efforts,” Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry said. “Assessing the results of our efforts is part of our continuous improvement and a hallmark of a world-class organization. While pleased with the team’s findings, we must sustain the changes we’ve made and complete our efforts still underway.”

“The review team believes,” according to the report, “that large and midsize bank supervision at the OCC is more effective now than three years ago.  While implementation of some recommendations has proceeded further than others, the overall recommendation of the review team is that the OCC continue along the path it is headed.”

Key improvements, noted by the review, include:

• Strengthening the role and resources of the lead experts that expands the horizontal and system wide view of the federal banking system;
• Enhancing the National Risk Committee (NRC) process by establishing new committees and processes to identify and mitigate systemic risk more effectively;
• Enhancing the staffing and human resource strategies, including providing more career development opportunities for staff;
• Developing a risk appetite statement and establishing an Enterprise Risk Management function headed by a Chief Risk Officer (CRO);
• Making improvements to the process for issuing and tracking matters requiring attention (MRAs); and
• Strengthening the enterprise-wide quality assurance program.

While the report found that the agency had completed most recommendations and made progress on all of them, the agency will continue to work on finishing partially completed recommendations.

Related Links

• 2016 Analysis of Implementation of 2013 OCC Bank Supervision Peer Review Project (PDF)
• 2013 International Review of OCC’s Supervision of Large and Midsize Institutions (PDF)