WASHINGTON–The new acting chief regulator of national banks has begun his tenure in the job by issuing a statement outlining four priorities he said would guide him in his new position.
Brian P. Brooks, the acting comptroller leading the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency following the resignation of Joseph Otting, said his priorities would be innovation, enhancing the national bank charter, ensuring bank community service through credit and access, and attention to OCC workers’ needs.
“These priorities will guide our effort over the months ahead and will ensure a safe, sound, and fair federal banking system; will help banks better serve the consumers, businesses, and communities that rely upon them, and will promote growth and economic opportunity, particularly for Main Street America,” Brooks said in a statement.
As CUToday.info reported, Otting resigned last week one day after issuing a final rewrite of Community Reinvestment Act rules. In the past, the OCC had joined with the Federal Reserve and FDIC in jointly enforcing CRA rules, but the latter two government entities have opted not to opt in to the OCC’s new plan.
Change in Focus
The Wall Street Journal quoted Brooks as saying that to ensure service to communities through “fair access to credit, capital and financial services,” he is focused less on community access to credit as envisioned through CRA (to low- and moderate-income [LMI] areas) and more on credit access to “lawful entities.”
“Fair access has come under attack,” Brooks stated. “Whether under the disreputable practice of ‘(Operation) Choke Point’ or under the guise of reputation risk, we should not tolerate lawful entities being denied access to our federal banking system based on their popularity among a powerful few. That is a dangerous and untenable practice that we will work to correct.”
Brooks said his other priorities would include:
- Specifying what the parameters of the “fintech charter” and other special purpose charters should be
- Working to clarify what “true lender” means, to “underscore that the terms of a lawfully made contract remain valid for the duration of that contract even if it is sold by a bank to another investor”
- Defending the agency’s authority to issue bank charters that “support companies’ ability to engage in the business of banking on a national scale, including taking deposits, lending money, or paying checks.”