On June 4, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing titled “Oversight of Prudential Regulators,” featuring testimony from Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, FDIC Chair Travis Hill, Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, and NCUA Chairman Kyle Hauptman. These officials discussed recent efforts to focus supervision on material financial risks, modernize capital standards, update CAMELS (covered by InfoBytes here), revise the community bank leverage ratio, and implement the GENIUS Act, among other issues. Committee Chair French Hill (R-AR) framed the hearing around efforts to tailor regulation to institutions’ size, complexity, and risk profile, while Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) criticized what she described as a deregulatory agenda that weakened consumer protection, capital requirements, stress testing, and CRA safeguards.

Comptroller Gould said the OCC had tailored examinations to actual risk, created a supervision group focused on community banks, revised model risk management guidance to avoid impeding use of AI by banks (covered by this Orrick Insight here), and investigated alleged debanking consistent with an August 2025 executive order (covered here). During questioning, lawmakers pressed the officials on CRA, bank merger review, master account access, the BSA/AML framework, fraud, discount window modernization, and the May 19 executive order involving undocumented immigrants and bank access (covered here). FDIC Chairman Hill said regulators were weighing whether to finalize a proposal to rescind the 2023 CRA rule and return to the 1995 rule or pursue other reforms. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) questioned whether the May 19 executive order could create more paperwork or push the OCC toward immigration enforcement, to which Gould responded that he thought her concerns were “overblown,” describing the order as a response to financial fraud and money laundering risks, while stating that regulators should withhold judgment on burden until guidance is issued.