A proposal to rescind and remove regulations requiring the annual, public disclosure of financial and other information by federally insured, state nonmember banks and insured state-licensed branches of foreign banks is out for comment until Nov. 26, according to a notice in the Federal Register.
The filing, by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), would complete the removal of such disclosures (part 350 of the agency’s rules) for the only federally supervised banking institutions still required to report such data.
Initiated during the 1980s, the disclosure requirements were implemented as a way to inform the public about the condition of individual institutions before technological advancements made the information accessible to the public via the Internet, the notice states. It says similar requirements were removed by the Federal Reserve in 1998, by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in 2017, and by the former Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) even earlier.
“With advancements in information technology since part 350 was adopted, including widespread public access to the internet (including through public libraries for individuals without their own direct personal access to the internet), information about the financial condition of individual insured depository institutions is now reliably and directly offered to the public through the FDIC’s and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s (FFIEC) websites,” the notice states. “For example, information about the financial condition and performance of all insured depository institutions is publicly available each quarter through the Call Report and the Uniform Bank Performance Report (UBPR). In addition, enforcement actions taken by the FDIC are readily available to the public from the FDIC’s website.”
The proposal would affect an estimated 3,534 FDIC-insured state nonmember banks and insured state-licensed branches of foreign banks, according to FDIC’s count as of June 30, 2018.
Disclosure of Financial and Other Information by FDIC-Insured State Nonmember Banks