U.S. House Financial Services Committee holds hearing on prudential regulators with focus on tailored rules and revised Basel III changes

The U.S. House Financial Services Committee is holding a full committee hearing on the supervisory and regulatory developments, rulemakings, and activities of the prudential regulators. In prepared remarks, Chairman French Hill said the hearing would examine whether recent agency actions, priorities, and policies are aligned with their statutory mission, with particular emphasis on tailoring prudential regulation to institutions’ size, complexity, and risk profile and reversing measures adopted under the previous administration. Hill linked the hearing to the committee’s work on community banking and capital rules. He cited the committee’s Main Street Capital Access Act and said several reforms in that legislation track actions now being taken by the agencies. He also pointed to the revised Basel III endgame proposal, along with changes to the standardized approach and the global systemically important bank surcharge, as measures that would better align capital with risk, reduce what he described as gold-plating, and increase lending capacity. In the digital asset area, his remarks highlighted the withdrawal of supervisory non-objection regimes, greater clarity for banks using blockchain technology, and implementation of the GENIUS Act to create a framework for payment stablecoins.