Unsafe or Unsound Practices, Matters Requiring Attention

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Office of the Comptroller of the Currency</SUBAGY> <CFR>12 CFR Part 4</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID OCC-2025-0174]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1557-AF35</RIN> FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION <CFR>12 CFR Part 305</CFR> <RIN>RIN 3064-AG16</RIN> <SUBJECT>Unsafe or Unsound Practices, Matters Requiring Attention</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Treasury, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) propose to define the term “unsafe or unsound practice” for purposes of section 8 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act and to revise the supervisory framework for the issuance of matters requiring attention and other supervisory communications. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before December 29, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments should be directed to the agencies as follows: <E T="03">OCC:</E> Commenters are encouraged to submit comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Please use the title “Unsafe or Unsound Practices, Matters Requiring Attention” to facilitate the organization and distribution of the comments. You may submit comments by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal—Regulations.gov:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://regulations.gov/.</E> Enter Docket ID “OCC-2025-0174” in the Search Box and click “Search.” Public comments can be submitted via the “Comment” box below the displayed document information or by clicking on the document title and then clicking the “Comment” box on the top-left side of the screen. For help with submitting effective comments, please click on “Commenter's Checklist.” For assistance with the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> site, please call 1-866-498-2945 (toll free) Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST, or email <E T="03">regulationshelpdesk@gsa.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Chief Counsel's Office, Attention: Comment Processing, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 400 7th Street SW, Suite 3E-218, Washington, DC 20219. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> 400 7th Street SW, Suite 3E-218, Washington, DC 20219. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> You must include “OCC” as the agency name and Docket ID “OCC-2025-0174” in your comment. In general, the OCC will enter all comments received into the docket and publish the comments on the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> website without change, including any business or personal information provided such as name and address information, email addresses, or phone numbers. Comments received, including attachments and other supporting materials, are part of the public record and subject to public disclosure. Do not include any information in your comment or supporting materials that you consider confidential or inappropriate for public disclosure. You may review comments and other related materials that pertain to this action by the following method: • <E T="03">Viewing Comments Electronically—Regulations.gov:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://regulations.gov/.</E> Enter Docket ID “OCC-2025-0174” in the Search Box and click “Search.” Click on the “Dockets” tab and then the document's title. After clicking the document's title, click the “Browse All Comments” tab. Comments can be viewed and filtered by clicking on the “Sort By” drop-down on the right side of the screen or the “Refine Comments Results” options on the left side of the screen. Supporting materials can be viewed by clicking on the “Browse Documents” tab. Click on the “Sort By” drop-down on the right side of the screen or the “Refine Results” options on the left side of the screen checking the “Supporting & Related Material” checkbox. For assistance with the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> site, please call 1-866-498-2945 (toll free) Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST, or email <E T="03">regulationshelpdesk@gsa.gov.</E> The docket may be viewed after the close of the comment period in the same manner as during the comment period. <E T="03">FDIC:</E> You may submit comments to the FDIC, identified by RIN 3064-AG16, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Agency Website: https://www.fdic.gov/federal-register-publications.</E> Follow instructions for submitting comments on the FDIC's website. • <E T="03">Email: comments@FDIC.gov.</E> Include RIN 3064-AG16 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Jennifer M. Jones, Deputy Executive Secretary, Attention: Comments—RIN 3064-AG16, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 550 17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20429. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> Comments may be hand-delivered to the guard station at the rear of the 550 17th Street NW building (located on F Street NW) 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 they wish 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 this notice 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <E T="03">OCC:</E> Eden Gray, Assistant Director, Allison Hester-Haddad, Special Counsel, Marjorie Dieter, Counsel, Harry Naftalowitz, Attorney, Chief Counsel's Office, 202-649-5490, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 400 7th Street SW, Washington, DC 20219. If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services. <E T="03">FDIC:</E> Division of Risk Management Supervision: Brittany Audia, Chief, Exam Support Section, (703) 254-0801, <E T="03">baudia@fdic.gov;</E> Legal Division, Seth P. Rosebrock, Assistant General Counsel, (202) 898-6609, <E T="03">srosebrock@fdic.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> The OCC and the FDIC (collectively, the agencies) exercise their enforcement and supervision authority to ensure that supervised institutions  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> refrain from engaging in unsafe or unsound practices. To that effect, the agencies believe it is important to promote greater clarity and certainty regarding certain enforcement and supervision standards by defining them by regulation. Moreover, the agencies believe it is critical that examiners and institutions prioritize material financial risks over concerns related to policies, process, documentation, and other nonfinancial risks and that their enforcement and supervision standards further that prioritization. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  For purposes of this <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> , the term “institution” refers to insured depository institutions and any other institutions subject to supervision or enforcement by the agencies. The scope of the proposed rule is discussed below. </FTNT> Specifically, pursuant to the provisions of section 8 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDI Act) (12 U.S.C. 1818), the agencies are authorized to take enforcement actions against depository institutions  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> and institution-affiliated parties  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> that have engaged in an “unsafe or unsound practice.” As described in section II.A of this <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> , the agencies are proposing to define by regulation the term “unsafe or unsound practice” for purposes of section 8 of the FDI Act. The proposed implementation of the definition of “unsafe or unsound practice” would apply to the agencies' supervisory and enforcement activities prospectively only. Moreover, it would not apply to the agencies' rulemaking activities or authority. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  A depository institution generally refers to an insured depository institution as defined in 12 U.S.C. 1813(c)(2); any national banking association chartered by the OCC, including an uninsured association; or a branch or agency of a foreign bank. Refer to specific provisions of 12 U.S.C. 1818 regarding their applicability to a specific institution. <E T="03">See</E> 12 U.S.C. 1818(b)(4)-(5). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See id.</E> 1813(u). </FTNT> In addition, the agencies are proposing to establish uniform standards for purposes of their communication of certain supervisory concerns. The agencies each communicate deficiencies that rise to the level of a matter that requires attention from an institution's board of directors and management, but the agencies have different standards for when the agency may communicate these deficiencies. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> As described in section II.B of this <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> , the agencies are proposing to establish uniform standards for when and how the agencies may communicate matters requiring attention (MRAs) as part of the supervision and examination process, consistent with t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 118k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━