OCC overhauls bank supervision and enforcement rules

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency revised its bank supervision and enforcement framework on Aug. 27, directing examiners to focus on material financial risks and substantive violations rather than minor procedural deficiencies. Summary OCC revised two supervisory manuals to prioritize material financial risks and substantive legal violations consistently. The agency publicly released its Matters Requiring Attention manual for the first time Thursday afternoon. Proposed rules divide legal violations into substantive and technical categories based on potential customer harm. Technical violations could require correction without enforcement actions, MRAs, or regulator-prescribed remediation methods for banks. Comments are due thirty days after the proposal’s official publication in the Federal Register notice. The OCC released two updated policy manuals alongside a joint final rule with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It also proposed a separate rule dividing violations of banking laws into “substantive” and “technical” categories. The manuals establish current OCC policy, while the legal-violation framework remains a proposal. Its provisions will not become bin...