On November 9, 2012, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Federal Reserve”) issued instructions and guidance for:

• the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review program for 2013 (“CCAR 2013”) applicable to the 19 bank holding companies (“BHCs”) with total assets of $50 billion or more that were previously subject to CCAR and the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (“SCAP”); and
• the Capital Plan Review program for 2013 (“CapPR 2013”) applicable to an additional 11 BHCs with total assets of $50 billion or more that were not subject to prior CCARs or SCAP, but were subject to CapPR in 2012.

CCAR 2013 and CapPR 2013 are both being conducted under the Federal Reserve’s previously adopted Capital Plan Rule. In addition, elements of CCAR 2013 are being implemented in conjunction with the Federal Reserve’s newly finalized Stress Test Rules adopted pursuant to the separate stress test requirements of sections 165(i)(1) and (2) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”). The following is an outline of certain notable aspects of the CCAR 2013, CapPR 2013 and their respective instructions.

In certain instances, the instructions and guidance for CCAR 2013 and CapPR 2013 contain new provisions, while in others, the new instructions are largely congruous with procedures for previous CCAR and CapPR iterations. Important aspects of CCAR 2013 instructions include:

…continue reading: Capital Plans and Stress Test Rules

On November 22, 2011, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the “Board”) published a final rule (the “Final CCAR Rule”) requiring most bank holding companies (“BHCs”) with $50 billion or more of total consolidated assets (“Covered BHCs”) to submit annual capital plans, with their related stress test requirements, to the appropriate Federal Reserve Bank and to generally obtain regulatory approval before making capital distributions, which include dividends and purchases of capital securities and instruments. The Final CCAR Rule expands the capital plan requirements from 19 to 34 BHCs, including, for the first time, foreign-owned BHCs. In addition, the Board released (i) two sets of instructions (the “Instructions”) that provide guidance on compliance with capital requirements in the Final CCAR Rule, one for Covered BHCs that did not participate in the 2011 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (“CCAR” and such BHCs, the “non-CCAR BHCs”) and another for the 19 Covered BHCs that participated in the 2011 CCAR (the “CCAR BHCs”) and (ii) the data templates (namely, the FR Y- 14A and FR Y-14Q) that will be used to collect data from the CCAR BHCs to support the data collection contemplated by the Final CCAR Rule. The Final CCAR Rule generally incorporates the core features of the Board’s June 17, 2011 proposal regarding capital planning (the “Proposed CCAR Rule”).

…continue reading: Federal Reserve Capital Plan and Stress Test Requirements