[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 21 (Thursday, January 31, 2019)]
[Notices]
[Pages 721-723]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-00366]
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FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
Agency Information Collection Activities: Announcement of Board
Approval Under Delegated Authority and Submission to OMB
AGENCY: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
SUMMARY: The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board)
is adopting a proposal to extend for three years, without revision, the
Policy Impact Survey (FR 3075 OMB No. 7100-00362).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Federal Reserve Board Clearance
Officer--Nuha Elmaghrabi--Office of the Chief Data Officer, Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC, 20551 (202)
452-3829. Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) users may
contact (202) 263-4869, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
System, Washington, DC 20551.
OMB Desk Officer--Shagufta Ahmed--Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, Office of
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Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Room 10235, 725
17th Street NW, Washington, DC 20503 or by fax to (202) 395-6974.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On June 15, 1984, the Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) delegated to the Board authority under the Paperwork
Reduction Act (PRA) to approve and assign OMB control numbers to
collection of information requests and requirements conducted or
sponsored by the Board. Board-approved collections of information are
incorporated into the official OMB inventory of currently approved
collections of information. Copies of the PRA submission, supporting
statements and approved collection of information instrument(s) are
placed into OMB's public docket files. The Board may not conduct or
sponsor, and the respondent is not required to respond to, an
information collection that has been extended, revised, or implemented
on or after October 1, 1995, unless it displays a currently valid OMB
control number.
Final approval under OMB delegated authority of the extension for
three years, without revision, of the following information collection:
Report title: Policy Impact Survey.
Agency form number: FR 3075.
OMB control number: 7100-0362.
Frequency: On occasion, up to five times a year.
Respondents: Bank holding companies (BHCs), savings and loan
holding companies (SLHCs), nonbank financial companies that the
Financial Stability Oversight Council has determined should be
supervised by the Board, and the combined domestic operations of
foreign banking organizations.
Estimated number of respondents: 14.
Estimated average hours per response: 850 hours.
Estimated annual burden hours: 59,500 hours.
General description of report: This survey collects information
from select institutions regulated by the Board in order to assess the
effects of proposed, pending, or recently-adopted policy changes at the
domestic and international levels. For example, the survey has been
used to collect information used for certain quantitative impact
studies (QISs) sponsored by bodies that the Board is a member of, such
as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the Financial
Stability Board (FSB). Recent collections have included the Basel III
monitoring exercise, which monitors the global impact of the Basel III
framework,\1\ the global systemically important bank (G-SIB) exercise,
which assesses firms' systemic risk profiles,\2\ and a survey of the
domestic systemic risk footprint of large foreign banking
organizations. The surveys have helped the Board assess changes in
regulation related to systemic footprint, insurance underwriting, and
trading book securitization, among other areas. Since the collected
data may change from survey to survey, there is no fixed reporting
form.
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\1\ For more information on the Basel III monitoring exercise,
including recent examples of QIS surveys sponsored by the BCBS and
conducted by the Board, see www.bis.org/bcbs/qis/.
\2\ For more information on the G-SIB exercise, see www.bis.org/bcbs/gsib/.
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Legal authorization and confidentiality: The Board is authorized to
collect the information in the FR 3075 from bank holding companies (and
their subsidiaries) under section 5(c) of the Bank Holding Company Act
(12 U.S.C. 1844(c)); from savings and loan holding companies under
section 10(b)(2) of the Home Owners Loan Act (12 U.S.C. 1467a(b)(2));
from non-BHC/SLHC systemically important financial institutions under
section 161(a) of the Dodd-Frank Act (12 U.S.C. 5361(a)); from the
combined domestic operations of certain foreign banking organizations
under section 8(a) of the International Banking Act of 1978 (12 U.S.C.
3106(a)) and section 5(c) of the Bank Holding Company Act (12 U.S.C.
1844(c)); from state member banks under section 9 of the Federal
Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. 324); from Edge and agreement corporations under
sections 25 and 25A of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. 602 and 625);
and from U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks under section
7(c)(2) of the International Banking Act of 1978 (12 U.S.C. 3105(c)(2))
and section 7(a) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C.
1817(a)).
These surveys would be conducted on a voluntary basis. The
confidentiality of information provided by respondents to the FR 3075
surveys will be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the
type of information provided for a particular survey. Depending upon
the survey questions, confidential treatment may be warranted under
exemptions 4, 6, and 8 of the Freedom of Information Act (5 U.S.C.
552(b)(4), (6), and (8)).
Current actions: On February 16, 2018, the Board published a notice
in the Federal Register (83 FR 7038) requesting public comment for 60
days on the extension, without revision, of the Policy Impact Survey.
The comment period for this notice expired on April 17, 2018. The Board
received one comment from a trade association.
Detailed Discussion of Public Comments
The commenter expressed appreciation for QISs, and indicated that
members of trade associations continue to participate in the voluntary
surveys because of the surveys' importance for the calibration of
international standards. The commenter included five recommendations
for helping the Board maximize the utility of QISs.
The commenter's first recommendation was that the Board work with
the Basel Committee to move QIS submission due dates to quarters, such
as the second quarter, during which stress testing and other regulatory
reporting requirements do not require significant resources from
respondent institutions. Although the timeline for development of QISs
is not under the Board's control, the Board has communicated the
commenter's concern regarding the timing of QIS submission dates to the
Basel Committee QIS working group. In cases where there is flexibility
to move a QIS submission date by one or two weeks, the Board will work
with the Basel Committee to avoid coincidence with significant
reporting deadlines to the extent feasible. However, because the
typical timeframe for the entire QIS process is six months and the
international working groups often require three or more months to
develop a QIS, the Board has a limited window for submission dates that
would allow for cleaning the data and a full analysis of results.
The commenter's second and third recommendations were to leverage
data available from other reporting forms to gather data that
respondents would otherwise report on the QIS, and, to the extent
feasible, to minimize inconsistency between QIS definitions and
established market and regulatory definitions. The Board agrees that
the goals of minimizing duplication and promoting consistent
definitions are worthwhile. To minimize duplication, the Board already
periodically reviews QISs and eliminates data items that have become
available through other reporting channels. The Board will continue to
work with the sponsoring body of a collection to identify established
market and regulatory definitions and to minimize any inconsistency
when feasible.
The commenter's fourth recommendation was to release for notice and
comment any QIS that gathers data for the purpose of
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calibrating international standards. The Board welcomes feedback on
current and future QISs from firms both formally, through frequently
asked questions (FAQs), and informally via newly instituted QIS
outreach sessions, ad hoc discussions, and emails. As a general matter,
however, the Board is unable to guarantee the release of QISs for
notice and comment because international working groups often require
three or more months to develop QISs, and the typical timeframe for the
entire QIS process is six months. The full notice-and-comment period
under the PRA for information collections is 60 days. In order to alter
such a proposed QIS prior to its finalization, the international
working groups that develop the QIS would need to reconvene and the
development process would need to be reopened. Given these constraints,
the Board may have insufficient time to conduct the final survey and
analyze the results within the typical six-month QIS timeframe.
However, when a QIS template is available in advance of the planned
distribution date, the Board works to distribute the templates to
respondents early for information purposes, and when time allows, to
obtain feedback. The Board has sent several proposed collections to
firms for feedback in advance of the due date, including the end-
December 2017 Basel Monitoring collection, and the newly proposed Basel
III Monitoring Capital and Liquidity collections. Upon receiving
feedback from firms, the Board, in conjunction with the Basel Committee
QIS working group, often revises the templates and applies the feedback
to subsequent templates in order to enhance the relevance and quality
of collected data.
The commenter's final recommendation was for the Board to recognize
QIS data limitations when applying international standards to U.S.
institutions. The commenter noted the example of a QIS for the largest
financial institutions in connection with Basel III, arguing that it
did not capture the impact of the proposals on all segments of the U.S.
banking sector, its customers, and the broader U.S. economy. The Board
recognizes the limitations of QIS data and confirms that QISs are a
tool that serves as a starting point for assessing the impact of
proposals.
The information collection will be extended without revision as
proposed.
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, January 17,
2019.
Michele Taylor Fennell,
Assistant Secretary of the Board.
[FR Doc. 2019-00366 Filed 1-30-19; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6210-01-P