Feb 2, 2022
As Jelena McWilliams prepares to leave office after an eventful three and a half years as FDIC chairman, she sat down with the ABA Banking Journal for a conversation on her tenure at the agency. While 2018 wasn’t that long ago, it feels worlds away—in terms of the time-is-a-flat-circle nature of the pandemic, but also in the landscape of bank innovation and racial justice.
In the final part of this two-part interview, McWilliams discusses several policy aspects of her tenure, including:
- Why she abstained from the FSOC vote to issue its report on climate change — and why financial regulators should factor the impact of climate risk supervision on employment into their frameworks.
- How climate risk supervision might affect the safety and soundness of community banks in energy-intensive regions.
- Why she chose not to finalize the OCC’s Community Reinvestment Act rule and why it’s important for regulators to work together on a consensus basis.
- Her hopes for the future of the FDIC’s new Mission-Driven Bank Fund, a project two years in the making to support minority depository institutions and community development financial institutions.
- How the FDIC’s small-dollar loan statement helps address financial inclusion challenges.