A financial institution would have greater ability to share confidential supervisory information (CSI) with its affiliates, auditors, state and federal regulators, and others under a proposal issued Friday by the Federal Reserve.
In a notice of proposed rulemaking and request for comment (for 60 days), the Federal Reserve said the proposal would “ease certain outdated and inefficient restrictions,” although it added that the CSI definition revisions would not expand or reduce the information that falls within the definitions.
The Fed, in its notice, stated that current rules only allow a supervised financial institution to disclose confidential supervisory information to its parent holding company. “The Board recognizes that supervised financial institutions may have legitimate business needs to disclose information to a variety of affiliates, including subsidiary banks, nonbank subsidiaries, and other entities within a holding company structure that provide centralized services to the company,” the proposal notes.
The proposal also allows the institutions to share information with other banking regulators, federal and state (as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CFPB) – but only if the institution’s “central point of contact at the Reserve Bank or equivalent supervisory team leader (CPC) concurs that the receiving agency has a legitimate supervisory or regulatory interest in the information.”
In addition to the CSI proposal, the Fed Friday also proposed to clarify updates regarding its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) procedures. “The proposal would update the Board’s FOIA regulation to be consistent with the Board’s current practices and to incorporate recent changes in law and guidance,” the Fed stated. “Some of these changes include updating definitions for expedited processing and the different categories of requesters.”
The revisions would also clarify terms and help users more easily navigate the process of filing a FOIA request, the Fed said. The proposal was also issued with a 60-day comment period.