On August 6, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould, in separate remarks, highlighted their agencies’ banking priorities and actions taken by the administration, including to reduce regulatory burdens on community banks, to promote “Main Street” economic growth, and to protect the U.S. financial system from illicit activity. Bessent highlighted community banks as disproportionately important to small-business lending, saying they made 40 percent of small-business loans despite holding 15 percent of industry assets and deposits. Gould described the OCC’s recent actions to focus supervision on material financial risk and reduce compliance burdens on community banks. Gould also pointed to the OCC’s finalized Reputation Risk rule (covered by InfoBytes here) and its proposed changes to Confidential Supervisory Information regulations (covered here) as examples of that agenda.

The officials also tied the community bank remarks to recent administration actions on illicit financial activity and purported credit risks involving borrowers not legally authorized to work in the U.S. As previously covered by InfoBytes, FinCEN issued an advisory on unlawful-employment and related financial-system risks, and the OCC, the FDIC and the NCUA issued guidance on credit risks associated with lending to non-work-authorized borrowers (covered here). Bessent said the actions reflected “a broader effort to deny unlawful activity any foothold,” while Gould said the focus on credit risk was “nothing new,” contending that the guidance reaffirmed “longstanding principles of safe and sound banking while providing additional clarity on how those principles should be applied today.”