Last month was a fairly typical January in terms of federal financial institution regulatory activity, at least based on recent history, with the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 regulatory freeze showing little comparative impact.
Of course, the freeze was only applied in the last 11 days of the month.
According to a tally of proposed and final rules published in the Federal Register, the five federal financial institution regulators published 15 measures in January, compared to an average of 13 per year over the past three years (2014-16).
January is not the busiest regulatory month for the financial regulators, based on recent history. For many of the regulators, December is the most active month with 26 rules proposed or finalized, on average, per year among the five agencies (FDIC is the outlier, with the October as the most active month).
However, January has had its share of action. In 2014, for example, the CFPB published an extension of the comment period for its advance notice of proposed rulemaking about debt collection practices, as well as a proposal to amend the regulation defining larger participants of certain consumer financial product and service markets by adding a new section to define larger participants of a market for international money transfers.
In 2015, NCUA published a revamped proposed rule on “risk-based capital” to require that credit unions taking certain risks hold capital commensurate with those risks. The proposal was revamped after thousands of comments were filed objecting to the first version.