Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Acting Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg on Monday (Feb. 7) included the evaluation of the risks related to cryptocurrency as a top priority for the agency to consider in 2022 — and likely beyond.
The FDIC will also work to strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act, address the financial risks caused by climate change, review the bank merger process and finalize the Basel III Capital Rule.
“The FDIC’s core mission is to maintain stability and public confidence in the U.S. financial system,” said Gruenberg in his statement. “The FDIC carries out this mission through its responsibilities for deposit insurance, banking supervision, and the orderly resolution of failed banks, including systemically important financial institutions.
“Banking supervision encompasses safety and soundness and consumer protection, both of which are essential to this important mission,” he said. “While there are many pressing issues the FDIC will have to address this year, key priorities are: the Community Reinvestment Act; climate change; the Bank Merger Act; crypto-assets; and the Basel III capital rule.”
All of these priorities “will require close collaboration among the federal banking agencies,” said Gruenberg.
Related: Report: Federal Financial Regulators Should Ensure Protection of Personal Data
In January, a review of five U.S. financial regulators responsible for protecting consumers’ personally identifiable information (PII) revealed four have failed to follow key practices, such as documenting how they minimized IT systems’ collection and use of such data.
In the “Federal Financial Regulators Should Take Additional Actions to Enhance Their Protection of Personal Information” report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, recommended that financial regulators better ensure the protection of PII they collect, use and share.
The GAO praised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for having an internal team that reviews each new piece of PII collected to better ensure the use of such data is minimized.
A review of practices by the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, the National Credit Union Administration and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that while these regulators have established practices to protect privacy, conduct staff training and implement incident response procedures, they did not apply essential procedures in other privacy protection areas.
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