The CFTC's substituted compliance determination relating to Japanese swap margin requirements was published in the Federal Register. The amendment became effective on April 1, 2019. As previously covered, the new determination updates a previous determination by finding comparability as to (i) the scope of entities subject to margin requirements and (ii) the treatment of inter-affiliate transactions.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC") named Maryann Kennedy as the Senior Deputy Comptroller for Large Bank Supervision. Ms. Kennedy will be responsible for overseeing the country's largest national banks, federal branches and agencies, and serve as a member of OCC's Executive Committee. Ms. Kennedy will assume the role in April 2019. Ms. Kennedy currently serves as the Deputy Comptroller for Large Bank Supervision, a post she has held since June 2015. She began at the OCC in 1991 following almost 10 years in the banking industry and was commissioned as a National Bank Examiner

The Federal Reserve Board and FDIC finalized their evaluations of the 2017 resolution plans for 14 domestic banking organizations and issued expectations for future plans. The new plans must be submitted by December 31, 2019. The agencies did not note any inadequacies in the 2017 resolution plans. However, FDIC Board Member Martin J. Gruenberg voted against approval for one of the 14 banking organizations for insufficiently addressing deficiencies in the transfer of uninsured and foreign deposits.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC delayed the effective date of the final rule that would amend the capital rule to address changes to credit loss accounting under U.S. GAAP, including banking organizations' implementation of the current expected credit losses methodology ("CECL"). Under the final rule, banking organizations will have the option to phase in the regulatory capital effects of the CECL. The new effective date is July 1, 2019. The original effective date was April 1, 2019.

The Federal Reserve Board ("FRB") provided additional information on models developed by the FRB's latest round of supervisory stress tests. According to the FRB, disclosing such information about the modeling process can improve the "credibility of the test" and transparency with respect to the supervisory models. The information included: ranges of bank loss rates - projected using FRB models - for loans that are categorized by risk characteristics; portfolios of hypothetical loans with loss rates; and improved descriptions of FRB models.