AFREF joined Public Citizen and Sierra Club in a letter to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision responding to its Discussion Paper, The role of climate scenario analysis in strengthening the management and supervision of climate related financial risks. An excerpt from the letter reads:
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) submitted letters to the Federal Reserve Board on its recent climate guidance for large banks. A coalition letter signed by 24 organizations urged the Fed to include enhanced safeguards and monitoring around fair lending violations, racial and economic
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 2, 2022 CONTACT Carter Dougherty carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org (202) 251-6700 Fed Takes Critical First Step in Managing Banks’ Climate Risk WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Reserve today proposed climate-related supervisory guidance for major banks that represents an important and long overdue step to
Americans for Financial Reform and allies delivered a petition with over 60,000 signatures to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (Fed), along with a letter signed by ten organizations. The petition and letter call on the Fed to address climate-related financial risks by issuing climate
AFREF submitted two comments to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in response to their request for comment on “Statement of Principles for Climate- Related Financial Risk Management for Large Financial Institutions.” The first comment was a joint letter signed by 13 partners regarding the fair
AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst Renita Marcellin hosted a conversation with Professor Art Wilmarth, author of Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act. Professor Wilmarth discussed why structural protections, such as a modern Glass-Steagall Act and the separation between banking and commerce, are necessary in the banking system. They also examined how the erasure of these laws have led to many of the challenges we are currently facing in the financial system including ILCs/special purpose charters, the rise of Fintech firms, and stablecoins and highlighted the urgency of revisiting laws on structural separations in the banking system.
Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) plans to develop climate risk supervisory expectations for large banks and issue guidance for comment by the end of the year. Over the past year, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and partners have urged the OCC and other banking regulators to take this important initial step immediately. We applaud Acting Comptroller Hsu for his leadership on this issue and we urge the other regulators to follow suit and issue guidance by the end of the year.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and partners Public Citizen, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Center for American Progress released a white paper outlining the key elements that federal bank regulators—including the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the National Credit Union Administration—can and should incorporate into public supervisory guidance for banks on assessing and addressing the risks faced by banks from climate change.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund joined 64 groups in writing a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Powell to take bold and timely action on climate change, in line with the US commitment to the Paris Agreement. The letter asks him to use the Fed’s
AFR opposes a radical legislation that would put unprecedented new limits on the powers of bank examiners.