FDIC Official Signs, Advertisement of Membership, False Advertising, Misrepresentation of Insured Status, and Misuse of the FDIC's Name or Logo

FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION <CFR>12 CFR Part 328</CFR> <RIN>RIN 3064-AG14</RIN> <SUBJECT>FDIC Official Signs, Advertisement of Membership, False Advertising, Misrepresentation of Insured Status, and Misuse of the FDIC's Name or Logo</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is seeking comment on a proposal that would amend signage requirements for insured depository institutions' (IDIs) digital deposit-taking channels and automated teller machines (ATMs) and like devices. The proposed changes are intended to address implementation issues and sources of potential confusion that have arisen following the adoption of current signage requirements for these banking channels. The proposal would provide additional flexibility to IDIs while also enabling consumers to better understand when they are conducting business with an IDI and when their funds are protected by the FDIC's deposit insurance coverage. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by the FDIC no later than October 20, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by RIN 3064-AG14, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">FDIC Website: https://www.fdic.gov/federal-register-publications.</E> Follow instructions for submitting comments on the agency website. • <E T="03">Email: Comments@fdic.gov.</E> Include RIN 3064-AG14 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Jennifer M. Jones, Deputy Executive Secretary, Attention: Comments—RIN 3064-AG14, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 550 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20429. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery to FDIC:</E> Comments may be hand-delivered to the guard station at the rear of the 550 17th Street NW building (located on F Street) on business days between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. • <E T="03">Public Inspection:</E> Comments received, including any personal information provided, may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.fdic.gov/federal-register-publications.</E> Commenters should submit only information that the commenter wishes to make available publicly. The FDIC may review, redact, or refrain from posting all or any portion of any comment that it may deem to be inappropriate for publication, such as irrelevant or obscene material. The FDIC may post only a single representative example of identical or substantially identical comments, and in such cases will generally identify the number of identical or substantially identical comments represented by the posted example. All comments that have been redacted, as well as those that have not been posted, that contain comments on the merits of the proposed rule will be retained in the public comment file and will be considered as required under all applicable laws. All comments may be accessible under the Freedom of Information Act. Follow the search instructions on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> to view public comments. This proposal, all comments received, and a summary of not more than 100 words of the proposed rule pursuant to the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023 are available at <E T="03">https://www.fdic.gov/resources/regulations/federal-register-publications/.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection: Monika Jansen, Senior Policy Analyst, (202) 898-6781, <E T="03">MoJansen@fdic.gov;</E> Edward Hof, Senior Policy Analyst, (202) 898-7213, <E T="03">EdwHof@fdic.gov;</E> Meron Wondwosen, Assistant Director, (202) 898-3544, <E T="03">MeWondwosen@fdic.gov;</E> Legal Division: Chantal Hernandez, Counsel, (202) 898-6678, <E T="03">ChHernandez@fdic.gov;</E> Nathan Raygor, Senior Attorney, (202) 898-8688, <E T="03">NRaygor@fdic.gov;</E> Shane Bogusz, Attorney, (571) 366-0212, <E T="03">SBogusz@fdic.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Policy Objectives</HD> On December 20, 2023, the FDIC adopted a final rule that, among other things, amended the FDIC's sign and advertisement of membership regulations under subpart A of 12 CFR part 328 (the 2023 Final Rule). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In that final rule, the FDIC stated that it was seeking to bring the certainty and confidence historically provided by the FDIC official sign found at banks' teller windows to other banking channels used by consumers in the modern banking landscape. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Under the 2023 Final Rule, the FDIC established sign requirements across all banking channels (physical premises, digital deposit-taking channels, and ATMs and like devices). The FDIC further stated that it intended for the new signage requirements to better align with how depositors conduct business with IDIs today and to help inform consumers when their funds are FDIC-insured. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The 2023 Final Rule requirements intended to more clearly distinguish deposit products (in which depositors' funds are insured) from non-deposit products and to help consumers distinguish IDIs from non-banks in the digital age. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Moreover, as explained in the 2023 Final Rule, the FDIC intended to permit flexibility for IDIs and other firms in the marketing of their products and services. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  89 FR 3504 (Jan. 18, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Id.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  89 FR 3504. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  89 FR 3504. </FTNT> Under this proposed rulemaking, the FDIC seeks to minimize identified implementation issues, reduce burden, and address potential consumer confusion with respect to signage requirements for digital deposit-taking channels and ATMs and like devices. In particular, the FDIC proposes to amend signage requirements in 12 CFR 328.4 and 328.5. The FDIC is not proposing substantive amendments to other provisions under 12 CFR part 328. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Statutory Authority and FDIC Regulations</HD> The FDIC maintains stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system by, among other things, insuring the deposits of all IDIs. Section 18(a) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDI Act)  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> governs IDI sign and advertising statement requirements and grants the FDIC authority to prescribe regulations with respect to these requirements. The regulations implementing signage and advertisement requirements are contained in §§ 328.0 through 328.8 of subpart A of 12 CFR part 328 (subpart A). Subpart A applies to IDIs, including insured branches of foreign banks. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  12 U.S.C. 1828(a)(1). </FTNT> In addition, section 18(a)(4) of the FDI Act  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> prohibits any person from misusing the name or logo of the FDIC or from engaging in false advertising or making knowing misrepresentations about deposit insurance. Regulations governing these prohibitions are contained in §§ 328.100 through 328.109 of subpart B of 12 CFR part 328. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  12 U.S.C. 1828(a)(4). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Previous Rulemaking</HD> In the 2023 Final Rule, the FDIC updated signage requirements to apply across all banking channels to account for how depositors conduct business with IDIs in the modern banking landscape; namely the increasing use of digital channels and new services provided by ATMs and like devices. In particular, in the 2023 Final Rule, the FDIC established an FDIC official digital sign. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The FDIC's rules require IDIs to display that sign on certain pages of its digital deposit-taking channels and ATMs and like devices. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Moreover, the FDIC requires IDIs to display non-deposit signage to differentiate insured deposits from non-deposit products on digital deposit-taking channels and ATMs and like devices. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> As stated in the 2023 Final Rule, the FDIC intended for IDIs' use of the FDIC official digital sign and non-deposit signage to help consumers better understand when consumers are conducting business with an IDI and when their funds are FDIC-insured. <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  12 CFR 328.5(b). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 12 CFR 328.4(c) and (e) and 328.5(d). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 12 CFR 328.4(d) and 328.5(g). </FTNT> The amendments made in the 2023 Final Rule took effect on April 1, 2024; however, full compliance with the amendments was not required until January 1, 2025, to provide additional opportunity for IDIs to establish processes and systems and make technological updates necessary to implement the new regulatory requirements. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> Based upon feedback from IDIs and other industry participants, in October 2024, the FDIC delayed the compliance date for the subpart A amendments to May 1, 2025, to provide additional time for IDIs to put in place processes and systems and make technological updates. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 3504, 3507 (Jan. 18, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> 89 FR 84261 (Oct. 22, 2024). The compliance date for amendments to subpart B remained January 1, 2025. </FTNT> In March 2025, the FDIC delayed the compliance date for 12 CFR 328.5, which governs signage requirements for digital deposit-taking channels, and the compliance date for 12 CFR 328.4, which includes analogous requirements related to an IDI's ATMs and like devices, from May 1, 2025 to March 1, 2026. <SU>13</SU> <FTRE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 81k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━