CSBS Releases 2016 Annual Report

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) released its annual report for the year 2016, which provides an overview of its efforts to continue to support the supervision of financial institutions at the state level as well as promote diversity and fairness in the U.S. financial system, highlights CSBS’s actions and accomplishments during 2016, and offers an overview of the CSBS strategic plan for the years 2015-2018.

In particular, the report summarizes CSBS’s participation in “legislative successes” in 2016, which included granting relief from certain Gramm-Leach-Bliley privacy notice requirements, increasing the threshold for banks’ eligibility for an 18-month exam cycle from $500 million to $1 billion, establishing a process by which banks can petition the CFPB to designate an area as “rural” or “underserved” for the purposes of the ability-to-repay rule, expanding the CFPB’s ability to exempt creditors serving consumers in rural or underserved areas from escrow requirements, providing the CFPB with the flexibility to deem a balloon loan a “qualified mortgage” if it was extended by a community bank or a creditor operating in a rural/underserved area, and authorizing the NMLSR to process background checks for non-mortgage license applicants.

The report also covers how CSBS provided assistance to the state regulators’ financial reform priorities, an overview of how CSBS worked to build strong congressional relationships, the CSBS State Supervisory Processes Committee, the actions that CSBS took to improve bank supervisory processes, how CSBS worked with state regulators to address new and emerging supervisory challenges, and a variety of other CSBS 2016 research topics, agenda items and achievements.