The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board have developed effective processes for determining whether a bank’s resolution plan is “not credible,” but should improve their transparency, according to a report published Tuesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Market participants believe that resolution planning “has improved the resolvability of large financial companies,” the report says, and this has led to some operational improvements for big banks. However, these plans have yet to be tested in the real world, so it’s not certain that they “actually would facilitate their rapid and orderly resolution”, the GAO report notes.
Moreover, regulators have not disclosed their frameworks for determining whether a plan is credible, nor have they disclosed their criteria for reducing the requirements on smaller companies. “Without greater disclosure, companies lack information they could use to assess and enhance their plans,” the GAO report says.
The regulators view this sort of information as confidential, but the GAO report argues that the lack of information “could undermine public and market confidence in resolution plans.” It recommends that the FDIC and the Fed publicly disclose information about their assessment frameworks and the criteria for smaller companies.
The report is based on a review of the policies and procedures of both the FDIC and the Fed, as well as interviews with regulators, a sample of banks, and a variety of market participants and academics.