Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council


The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council is a formal U.S. government interagency body composed of five banking regulators that is "empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions". It also oversees real estate appraisal in the United States. Its regulations are contained in title 12 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

Composition

FFIEC includes five banking regulators—the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

History

FFIEC was established March 10, 1979, pursuant to title X of the Financial Institutions Regulatory and Interest Rate Control Act of 1978.

Housing and real estate

The FFIEC was given additional statutory responsibilities by section 340 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980 to facilitate public access to data that depository institutions must disclose under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and the aggregation of annual HMDA data, by census tract, for each metropolitan statistical area. In accordance with HMDA, the FFIEC established an advisory State Liaison Committee composed of five representatives of state supervisory agencies. The HMDA requires "most lenders to identify the race, sex, and income of loan applicants and borrowers", so the FFIEC is able to deduce things like "the number of mortgages issued to black and Hispanic borrowers rose sharply", as it did in 1993. In 2006, the State Liaison Committee was added to the Council as a voting member.
The Appraisal Subcommittee was established within the FFIEC pursuant to title XI of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989. The ASC oversees The Appraisal Foundation, whose work is accomplished by three independent boards—the Appraiser Qualifications Board, the Appraisal Standards Board, and the Appraisal Practices Board, who collectively regulate real estate appraisal in the United States.

Cybersecurity

and FFIEC Chair Thomas J. Curry stated on May 8, 2014, that "helping to make banks less vulnerable and more resilient to cyber-attacks" has been one of his top priorities. In June 2014 FFIEC launched a new on cybersecurity and announced that it was initiating a pilot for 500 member institutions that will focus on how these institutions manage cybersecurity and how prepared they are to mitigate cyber risks.
On June 30, 2015 the FFIEC released the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool to enable regulated financial institutions to assess their cybersecurity readiness. This tool may be used as a self-assessment. Regulators may also review the completed assessment during their examination.

Members

The FFIEC has six voting representatives of member agencies. As of April 2019, FFIEC members include: