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WASHINGTON — Despite protests from the financial services industry, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday that it would go ahead with a plan to require millions of dollars of system upgrades at large banks to prepare the agency to handle a colossal failure.
June 18 -
WASHINGTON - Several large banking companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wachovia Corp., and PNC Financial Services Group Inc., oppose a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plan to require larger financial institutions to facilitate quicker payouts in the event of a failure.
March 21
WASHINGTON The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was set to issue a proposal Tuesday that would require big banks to keep more detailed records on insured deposits to help expedite payouts in the event of a failure.
The plan would apply to 37 banks with more than 2 million in insured deposit accounts, including institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, PNC, Regions and most other large national and regional institutions. The proposal is more stringent than a rule that was finalized after a fight with the industry in June 2008.
"Timely access to insured deposit is critical to maintaining public confidence in the banking system," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a press release.
The FDIC's board is scheduled to vote on the proposal Tuesday morning.
The move comes as regulators continue to wrestle with the logistics of resolving the failure of a big bank.
The proposal will help in "making timely deposit insurance determinations where an insured bank has a large number of deposit accounts and the FDIC has little time to plan for its failure," Gruenberg said.
The FDIC said it is open to considering other measures to improve record keeping that would help the FDIC resolve a large failed bank.
In 2008, many in the industry felt the record keeping requirement was overly burdensome, given the expense to megabanks of upgrading their systems and the perception that such a collapse was unlikely.
As proposed, the new plan would require banks to keep more complete data on depositors and develop systems to be able to calculate and separate insured and uninsured amounts.
The FDIC proposal would apply to a more select group of banks than the current requirements that were put in place in 2008. While the proposal would apply to banks with more than 2 million accounts, the thresholds put in place in 2008 applied to banks with more than $2 billion in insured deposits, and either 250,000 deposit accounts or $20 billion in total assets. Currently, 151 banks are covered.
The proposal would not cover any community banks, the FDIC said.
