All in Regulatory Update

On February 19, 2026, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it will hold a hybrid public outreach meeting on March 26, 2026, as part of its review of regulations under the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act (EGRPRA). EGRPRA mandates that the Board, with public input, review its regulations every 10 years to identify outdated or unnecessarily burdensome requirements for certain supervised institutions.

On February 16, 2026, Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman spoke at the American Bankers Association 2026 Conference for Community Bankers, where she talked about the significant migration of mortgage origination and servicing from banks to nonbanks and the regulatory factors that may be driving this shift. In her speech, Bowman highlighted a long-term contraction in bank participation in the mortgage market. 

On February 13, 2026, FinCEN issued an order granting exceptive relief to covered financial institutions from certain requirements under FinCEN’s Customer Due Diligence Requirements for Financial Institutions rule. The order exempts covered financial institutions from the requirement to identify and verify the beneficial owners of a legal entity customer each time the customer opens a new account.

On February 6, 2026, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) issued a final rule to repeal the Fair Lending, Fair Housing, and Equitable Housing Finance Plans regulation (Part 1293). Part 1293 codified the FHFA’s fair housing and fair lending oversight of the regulated entities, the Enterprise Equitable Housing Finance Plan (EHFP) program, and requirements for the Enterprise to collect a borrower's language preference and housing counseling and homeownership education information.

On February 10, 2026, the ABA Banking Journal reported that almost 200 Democratic and independent members of Congress filed an amicus brief urging the courts to halt what they said was the Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the CFPB. The lawmakers argue that the Trump administration’s actions are unconstitutional because only Congress has the authority to create and abolish government agencies.

On February 6, 2026, the FDIC announced a 90-day extension to the comment period on the agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) that would implement the application provisions under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS Act) for FDIC-supervised state nonmember banks and state savings associations seeking to issue payment stablecoins through a subsidiary.