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Reflecting Back on 2023: Community and Regional Banking

By Jeffrey Deibel
Supervision News Flash
November 2023
Panelists at the Community and Regional Bankers Forum
Richmond Fed SRC leaders respond to questions during the regulator panel at the Community and Regional Banker Forum.

In looking back at this year, one thing is clear to us in the Supervision, Regulation and Credit department at the Richmond Fed: Supervision is built on relationships. The relationships that we have with our bankers, our state banking counterparts and with each other in our department were put to the test earlier this year. Since the banking failures in March 2023, we’ve been taking time to assess and evaluate our processes. What’s been made public through the Supervision and Regulation Review of Silicon Valley Bank report released in April is clear: that more work needs to be done. Here in our community and regional unit, our central points of contact reached out to the leaders of the financial institutions within their portfolios to understand what they were experiencing during the early days of the banking turbulence. We found that those relationships allowed us to understand where stakeholders were impacted negatively and where the impact was not being felt. It is those supervisory relationships that make for more opportunities for us to get together and hear from each other like at our recent 2023 Community and Regional Banker Forum.

Brent Hassell talking with bankers

The forum provides multiple opportunities to discuss what's top of mind for bankers.

The annual forum is one of the highlights of the year for us. It’s a time for us to listen to our bankers and allows us the time to share current Fed messages from Washington and Richmond, speak to trends in examination findings, offer resources to complement your risk and resilience practices, and update you on our District happenings. This year’s forum focused on new guidance and new happenings at the Fed from Third Party Risk Management guidance and the FedNow Service, which went live in July. One of my favorite parts of the event is our regulator panel, which allows bankers from around the District to directly ask questions of the leaders of the Richmond Fed’s supervision teams for community and regional and consumer affairs. The questions and the interactions in this session are invaluable to the supervision function. As I shared at this year’s forum, we want you to ask questions of us as your regulator –– we’re going to be tough, we’re going to be thorough, but we’re also here to learn how these actions may impact your institution. At the end of the day, we want the same outcome –– a sound bank that meets the needs of the community. If you didn’t have a chance to join us for this year’s forum, be on the lookout for our Save the Date for the 2024 event.
Participants in a Richmond Fed Cyber Sim Lab with IBM

Participants in a Richmond Fed Cyber Sim Lab with IBM learned about and exercised approaches to complement their own cyber risk practices.

When mentioning resources to complement your risk and resilience practices, I would be remiss if I did not highlight our second year of our Cyber Sim Lab in partnership with IBM. We hosted our lab twice in 2023 with IT officers from various financial institutions across the District. Additionally, we hosted a second forum with chief executive officers. In each edition of the lab, our information technology examiners provided valuable comments and insights on how institutions are impacted by cyberattacks. The lab is another example of our effort to provide direct connections to our financial institutions, as well as connecting to those impacted by the work we do. In 2024, we hope to bring you more labs and events where we can connect, learn and strengthen these relationships.