Federal Financial Regulatory Agencies Seek Comment On Interagency Effort to Reduce Regulatory Burden

WASHINGTON — The federal financial regulatory agencies announced today that they will publish a joint notice and request for comments on a plan to identify and eliminate outdated, unnecessary or unduly burdensome regulations imposed on insured depository institutions.

The request from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) is being made pursuant to Section 2222 of the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act of 1996 (EGRPRA). The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) will be issuing a separate notice and request for comments pursuant to EGRPRA.

Under the 1996 law, the agencies are required to review their regulations at least once every 10 years. The publication of the notice and request for comments in a forthcoming issue of the Federal Register will mark the beginning of a three-year joint effort by the agencies to obtain suggestions from the industry and public on more streamlined and less burdensome ways to regulate.

EGRPRA requires the agencies to categorize the regulations, publish the categories for comment, report to Congress on any significant issues raised by the comments and eliminate unnecessary regulations.

The agencies will publish the categories for which they are seeking comments twice a year. For this first publication, comments are requested for the following three categories of regulations: Applications and Reporting, Powers and Activities, and International Operations.

To encourage full participation in the EGRPRA review, the agencies have scheduled five roundtable discussions with bankers and other interested parties. The sessions will be held as follows:

• June 11, Orlando, FL
• June 26, St. Louis, MO
• July 15, Denver, CO
• September 18, San Francisco, CA
• October 15, New York, NY

For more information, please contact: 

• FDIC: Claude Rollin, Project Manager, EGRPRA, at (202) 898-8741 
• Federal Reserve: Pat Robinson, Senior Counsel, at (202) 452-3005 
• NCUA: Mary Rupp, Attorney, at (703) 518-6540 
• OCC: Lee Walzer, Counsel, at (202) 874-5090 
• OTS: Robyn Dennis, Manager, Thrift Policy, at (202) 906-5751

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