Banking and Finance Law Daily Wrap Up, BANKING OPERATIONS—BPI calls on FDIC to pause, streamline bank resolution plan requirements, (Aug 22, 2025)

By Steven Melendez

The Bank Policy Institute says the FDIC should impose "commonsense" requirements that don't duplicate other regulatory demands.

Public policy and advocacy group, the Bank Policy Institute (BPI), has sent a letter urging the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to pause all required filings under the insured depository institution (IDI) resolution planning rule and conduct rulemaking to further streamline what's required to be submitted.

"After fifteen years of experience with resolution planning requirements and tens of thousands of pages of resolution submissions, it is appropriate for the FDIC to reevaluate the objectives and processes of resolution planning and to ensure its rules are targeted to the information the FDIC needs to resolve a failed bank efficiently," wrote Tabitha Edgens, the BPI's executive vice-president and co-head of regulatory affairs, in the letter sent to FDIC Acting Chairman Travis Hill.

The BPI applauded the FDIC for issuing an April 18, 2025, frequently-asked questions (FAQ) page that helped "provide targeted relief from some of the most duplicative and unnecessary aspects of the IDI Rule revisions that were adopted by the FDIC in 2024," calling on the FDIC to formally codify elements of the FAQ as part of a revised IDI rule.

And the group urged the FDIC to review the underlying statutory authority for the rule and eliminate elements that lack clear authority under the law, which the BPI suggested is in line with recent Supreme Court rulings on administrative law and Trump administration priorities.

In the meantime, the BPI suggested, the FDIC should pause resolution plan filing requirements so regulated institutions don't begin preparing materials that ultimately won't be necessary if the rule is simplified. "This would be consistent with the FDIC’s previous moratorium on submissions under the IDI Rule that was in effect between 2018 and 2021 due to ongoing rulemaking," according to the BPI letter.

The FDIC should also aim to cut mandates that duplicate the resolution planning requirements, sometimes called "living will" requirements, separately imposed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve under section 165(d) of the Dodd-Frank Act, according to the BPI. For bank holding companies with $250 billion or more in assets, known as Title I plan filers, the FDIC should eliminate separate IDI plan filing requirements, or at least "dramatically simplify" them, according to the BPI.

For holding companies with single point-of-entry (SPOE) strategies, creating a separate resolution plan that assumes multiple point-of-entry (MPOE) approaches through owned IDIs is unnecessary and "risks confusing relevant host-country regulators whose cooperation may be critical to successful execution of the primary SPOE strategy, as well as market counterparties," according to the BPI. And for those with MPOE plans, the current requirement mandates coming up with two "similar but non-identical resolution plans" using "idiosyncratic defined terms and detailed requirements" for the two resolution planning regimes, the group argued.

For other banking institutions, the FDIC should also streamline requirements, according to the BPI. For Group A covered IDIs (CIDIS)—those with $100 billion or more in total assets—the BPI argues the FDIC should streamline specific requirements around valuation estimation, detailed description of failure scenarios around particular resolution strategies, and revisit reporting requirements imposed in 2024. The BPI also called on the FDIC to simplify what's required in interim supplement filings.

Additionally, the FDIC should re-evaluate asset thresholds in the IDI rule in light of inflation and economic growth, the BPI suggested.

Companies: Bank Policy Institute

RegulatoryActivity: BankingOperations DepositInsurance FinancialStability