MVA White Collar Defense, Investigations, and Regulatory Advice Blog

The 2026 ABA Banking Law Committee Meeting held in Washington, DC from January 15-17 delivered significant content in just over two full days of sessions. Conversations with state and federal regulators, agency general counsels, and practitioners reveal a regulatory landscape in transition. Below we summarize the following four themes from the meeting shaping the future of bank supervision, enforcement, and policy:

1. The federal banking agencies are entering 2026 with a broad and active regulatory agenda, including continued focus on tailoring and capital and additional focus ...

Key Financial Regulatory Developments

2025 brought one of the most dynamic financial regulatory environments since the immediate aftermath of Dodd‑Frank, marked by shifting agency priorities, rapid litigation developments, and evolving supervisory philosophies.

The Department of Justice recently announced, “[i]n the first [criminal] prosecution of its kind,” that husband and wife owners of wound graft companies were sentenced to 14.5 and 15 years imprisonment respectively for causing over $1.2 billion in false claims to be submitted to Medicare Part B and other federal health care programs for medically unnecessary wound grafts. The defendants pled guilty to conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud and were ordered to pay more than $1.2 billion in restitution and forfeit approximately $410 million in fraudulent proceeds ...

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Federal Reserve Board (collectively, the “Agencies”) have jointly issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) that, if finalized as proposed, could provide significant regulatory relief for community banks. The proposal seeks to lower the Community Bank Leverage Ratio (CBLR), which is a measure of the ratio of an institution’s tangible equity capital to its average total consolidated assets, from 9% to 8% for qualifying institutions and extend the grace period for ...

On December 11, 2025, the White House issued an Executive Order titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence.”  This EO aims to establish a uniform and “minimally burdensome” Federal standard for AI regulation, including by directing the development of a federal legislative recommendation to preempt the current patchwork of varying state AI laws, except in a few discrete areas: “(i) child safety protections; (ii) AI compute and data center infrastructure, other than generally applicable permitting reforms; (iii) State government ...

The banking industry is on the cusp of more changes in recovery and resolution planning, shaped by shifting regulatory priorities and perspectives on the 2023 regional bank failures. Recent actions by the FDIC and OCC have previewed a rollback of enhanced requirements introduced just last year—moves that would reduce the documentation required from large institutions. This article summarizes the proposed changes and potential impacts.

Why Regulators Are Changing Course

The 2023 regional bank failures raised questions about resolution readiness, prompting regulators to ...

On October 29th, the Eastern District of Kentucky (the “Court”) enjoined the CFPB from enforcing the Personal Financial Data Rights Rule (the “Rule”) until it has completed its reconsideration of the Rule.[1] The Rule had been released by the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau (“CFPB”) in October of 2024 pursuant to the CFPB’s authority under Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act.[2] The Rule requires financial institutions to share consumers’ personal financial data with other providers at no cost upon the consumer’s request. The Court, having determined that challenges to the Rule were likely to succeed on the merits, has now enjoined the CFPB from enforcing the Rule, finding that requiring financial institutions to comply with the Rule while it is under reconsideration by the CFPB would cause irreparable harm.

The Clearing House conference was insightful as always.  Here are our main takeaways. 

On November 3, 2025, IOSCO released its anticipated Pre-Hedging Final Report (“Final Report”) detailing its assessment of current pre-hedging market practices and setting out recommended guidance for International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (“IOSCO”) members. The intended purpose of the Final Report is “to facilitate greater consistency and clarity around pre-hedging, and to promote a level playing field for all participants across jurisdictions, asset classes and execution types.” IOSCO initiated its multi-step assessment process in June 2023. IOSCO is the international body that brings together markets regulators to establish standards and provide guidance to its members. Both the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission are members and sit on the IOSCO board.

“The ability of national banks to conduct a multistate business subject to a single uniform set of federal laws, under the supervision of a single regulator, free from visitorial powers of various state authorities, is a major advantage of the national charter.” John D. Hawke Jr., former Comptroller of the Currency (Feb. 12, 2002).[1] “When national banks are unable to operate under uniform, consistent and predictable standards, their business suffers and so does the safety and soundness of the national banking system.” Id. (January 7, 2004).[2]