In his first public appearance since appointed to the position, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Rodney Hood told community bankers that regulation needs to be effective “without being excessive.” He also plans to reach out to the Justice Department to ask it to reconsider how it reviews the competitive effects of proposed bank mergers to streamline the merger application process.
“I am blessed as the single head of an agency that I can act unilaterally, but I don’t want to do so fecklessly and irresponsibly,” Hood said today during a Q&A with American Bankers Association President and CEO Rob Nichols at the Conference for Community Bankers in Pheonix. “I want to do it so it’s grounded in how do we right-size regulations and tailor them so you’re not dealing with a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Hood, the former chairman of the National Credit Union Administration, was appointed acting comptroller by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Feb. 10. President Trump has since nominated Jonathan Gould to be comptroller but Hood will remain head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency until the Senate confirms the nomination.
During the Q&A, Hood outlined his priorities as acting OCC head. One priority is financial inclusion, with Hood pledging to explore ways to grow the number of people with accounts in financial institutions. Other priorities include financial technology and cybersecurity, with Hood encouraging banks to find cybersecurity solutions that work best for the size and complexity of their institutions. He also plans to explore strengthening anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act protocols “without it being deleterious to your bottom line.”
Hood also said he doesn’t believe current banking regulations are properly tailored to the institutions they cover. “And I certainly in my time as acting comptroller … will be going through the rules to make sure that we are looking at appropriate opportunities to reduce regulatory burden by determining what needs to be adjusted and, again, not looking at everything through a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said.
One regulation Hood plans to revisit is how the Justice Department and banking agencies calculate the competitive effects of bank mergers. Proposed bank mergers cannot get accurate scores about their market share because credit unions’ market share is not included in those calculations, he said.
“The first thing I’ll do tomorrow is reach out to the Department of Justice and the antitrust division to see what we can do to have a [memorandum of understanding] between OCC and the Department of Justice to pave the way for those scores to be reflected appropriately and accurately so your mergers will not be delayed,” he said.
