The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has amended the criteria it uses to designate financial institutions as minority depository institutions, including the removal of policy language that the agency said allowed it to continue MDI designation “when the bank no longer met the statutory definition of an MDI.”
The new OCC policy statement unveiled today was issued as part of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency deregulatory initiative, which instructed agencies to identify regulations that “implicate matters of social, political or economic significance that are not authorized by clear statutory authority,” the agency said. The updated statement more closely aligns OCC policy on MDIs with the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989, and is meant to minimize disruption to current MDIs, it added.
Under the policy, the OCC defines an MDI to include a national bank or federal stock savings association that is at least 51% owned by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. MDIs also include federal mutual savings associations in which the majority of the board of directors, account holders and the community served are predominantly minority.
Banks with an MDI designation the day before the issuance of the policy statement may maintain their MDI designations, according to the agency. However, a bank’s OCC examiners may reassess that determination if the facts underlying the designation undergo a material change.
The OCC said the new policy also eliminates references to certain agency resources and programs that are obsolete.
