A filing is inconsistent with law or regulation if it does not meet the applicable statutory or regulatory criteria for that filing type, the national bank regulator said Wednesday in a bulletin focusing on the agency’s filing decision process.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said the bulletin was meant to clarify the standards for its decisions on filings. Those are typically formal applications, notices, and disclosure documents submitted by banks and other entities regulated by the agency.
In its bulletin, the OCC said approves a filing when it finds the filer “has favorably met the appropriate statutory, regulatory and policy criteria related to the filing type.”
Sometimes, where appropriate, the OCC said it will condition an approval to ensure the filer will operate in a safe and sound manner, “consistent with OCC policy, and comply with applicable laws and regulations.”
However, the OCC said some filings don’t meet the standard for approval. “When the OCC finds a significant supervisory, Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) (if applicable), or compliance concern exists with respect to the filer, approval is inconsistent with law, regulation, or OCC policy, or the filer fails to provide requested information, the agency plans to deny the filing,” the agency said.
More specifically, the agency said it would return a materially deficient filing before engaging in any meaningful processing of the filing. “This includes the failure to furnish required biographical and financial information of individuals and corporate background and financial report for entities, as well as any required information requested by the filing form.”
That agency will also return a filing as materially deficient if, it said, “after attempting to have the filer furnish all required information for the OCC to assess the statutory or regulatory criteria through an additional information request, the responses do not sufficiently respond to the requests. This includes where the organizers of a de novo charter have not demonstrated that all products and services have been defined with particularity, including how they will be operationalized, or have not fully defined the associated governance, risk management, and compliance management infrastructure to manage these products and services.”
When a filing is denied, the agency noted that it must notify the filer in writing of the denial reasons. The OCC said it plans to make all denial decisions public, which it said would provide the banking industry and all applicable stakeholders “awareness of how the OCC has applied the decision criteria in that proposal.”
“The denial of an application does not prohibit the applicant from filing a subsequent application,” the agency further clarified.
OCC Clarifies Filing Decision Process
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