WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reportedly plans to name a senior Federal Reserve official to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on an interim basis.
Michael Hsu, an associate director of bank supervision at the Fed, will be appointed within weeks by Yellen to lead the OCC, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Monday afternoon.
After joining the OCC, Hsu will be assigned the title of first deputy comptroller, effectively putting him in charge of the national bank regulator until a formal nominee for comptroller of the currency can be confirmed by the Senate — a process that routinely stretches months. To date, the Biden administration has not announced a nominee to lead the OCC.
More than three months after President Biden took office, some analysts have blamed the administration for leaving the
The next comptroller of the currency will face a long list of policy challenges and decisions upon taking office, including a
The incoming comptroller will also need to decide the fate of the agency’s controversial “true lender” rule, a regulation that has come under
There’s also the matter of an unpublished “fair access” rule, championed by former acting comptroller Brian Brooks. That rulemaking was intended to punish banks for making business decisions deemed “political” such as withholding services from the fossil fuel industry. The next comptroller will likely decide whether to
