Neither the Federal Housing Finance Agency or the banking industry “currently have the expertise to recommend or make changes to enhance the supervisory and regulatory framework” of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks with regard to climate-related factors, ABA said in a letter to FHFA today.
The Treasury Department today announced a new climate policy strategy intended to “bring to bear the full force of [Treasury] on domestic and international policymaking, leveraging finance and financial risk mitigation to confront the threat of climate change.”
Democrats today reintroduced the Climate Risk Disclosure Act, bill that would require public companies to make disclosures about their exposure to climate-related risks.
The Basel Committee today published two papers on climate-related risk that will serve as a “conceptual foundation” as the committee works to incorporate climate risk into the Basel regulatory framework.
The Financial Stability Board is in the process of building a “roadmap” to coordinate work being done on climate-related financial risks, FSB Chair and Federal Reserve Vice Chairman for Supervision Randal Quarles wrote in a letter to G-20 finance ministers today.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen today flagged climate change as the most significant urging risk for the Financial Stability Oversight Council to address, noting that “our financial system must be prepared for the market and credit risks of these climate-related events.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told the House Financial Services Committee today that, regarding his agency’s work on mitigating climate change-related risks, it is a “long-held policy of the Fed that we don’t tell banks what legal businesses they can lend to.”
A group of Republican senators this week cautioned Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that using financial regulation and supervision to advance environmental policy objectives “would be beyond the scope of the Federal Reserve’s mission,” and urged against taking additional actions with regard to climate-related risks.
The Federal Reserve is “looking very carefully” at whether and how it might issue a digital dollar, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told members of Congress today.
A look at ABA’s government relations agenda for 2021