Biden signs omnibus bill with banking provisions

President Biden has signed the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill into law, including two provisions tracked by the banking industry.

The first is a legislative fix for the London interbank offered rate, aimed at helping the industry transition away from the now defunct benchmark. The package allows the Federal Reserve to establish replacement rates for legacy contracts still using Libor.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has OK'd the fix, which was pulled into the omnibus from a bill introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers earlier this month.

The other is a measure that would impose new requirements on banks and other businesses to report significant cyber incidents and ransom payments to the federal government. An incident report will need to be made within 72 hours of determining if an event is significant, while notification of ransom payments to hackers would need to be made within 24 hours.

The banking industry responded positively to the news. Bank Policy Institute President Greg Baer said in a statement that the Libor fix “safeguards global financial markets from uncertainty,” while the cyber incident reporting requirement “creates a uniform reporting standard across every major sector of the economy and gives the government the information they need to coordinate and better defend against attacks.”