The House Committee on Financial Services, led by Chairman French Hill (R-AZ), sent letters to certain agencies under the committee’s jurisdiction to ask the heads of those agencies to rescind, modify or re-propose certain Biden-Harris administration regulatory initiatives.

Several letters were sent to the federal banking agencies – the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

In the letters, the committee calls the rules and guidance issued under the previous administration ones that “reduce competition and innovation” and say they would “have significant negative economic consequences, and frequently ran afoul of statutorily-mandated procedures intended to ensure well-formulated rulemaking.”

The letters submitted to the banking agencies included:

• A letter to Acting FDIC Chairman Travis Hill, Acting Comptroller of Currency Rodney Hood, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, which, among other things, takes issue with a final rule issued jointly by the banking regulators that amended the Community Reinvestment Act.
• A letter to Acting CFPB Director Russ Vought, which, in part, asks for rescission of the January 2025 changes to the Fair Credit Reporting Act which bans consumer reporting agencies from including medical debt on credit reports.
• A letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell asking for modification of the Juli 2023 proposals for significant revisions to the capital surcharge for globally systemically important banks, or “GSIBs.”
• A letter to Acting Comptroller of the OCC Rodney Hood, asking the OCC to rescind its September 2024 final policy statement on bank merger transactions.
• A letter to Acting Chairman of the FDIC Travis Hill, which, among other things, asks for the withdrawal of its proposed rules on bank mergers, corporate governance standards, and proposed incentive-based compensation arrangements.

Letter to the SEC

Chairman Hill also sent a letter to the SEC claiming the regulator, under former Chair Gary Gensler, “imposed undue burdens on existing public companies” that were disincentives to companies considering going public.

The letter to Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda asks for the withdrawal of final and proposed rules in a number of areas, including the ones titled “Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure,” “Regulation Best Execution,” and “Conflicts of Interest Associated with the Use of Predictive Data Analytics by Broker Dealers.”

Digital assets and technology

Hill also sent letters – along with the members on the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence – to the federal banking agencies and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The letters urged these agencies to withdraw several regulatory actions “that have stifled innovation, restricting financial institutions’ engagement in digital assets and hindering the growth of financial technology (fintech) companies.”

The letters contend that the prior administration’s approach to digital assets and fintech “fostered regulatory uncertainty, discouraged entrepreneurship, and limited competition.”

• The interagency letter to Hill, Hood, and Powell asks the agency heads to withdraw guidance documents FIL-16-2022, SR 22-6 and SR 23-8, which require all FDIC-supervised institutions engaged in or planning to engage in digital assets or blockchain technology to notify the FDIC (the first one) or Federal Reserve (the latter two). And it asks the OCC to withdraw Interpretive Letter 1179, as it imposed unnecessary supervisory burdens on banks’ use of distributed ledger technology.
• The letter to Acting CFPB Director Russ Vought asked for a few actions to be taken on certain rules and rule proposals; including one getting attention in the news right now – the rule on the “Use of Digital User Accounts to Access Buy Now Pay, Later Loans.”

Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC)

Chair Hill also sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent regarding FSOC’s decision – under the Biden Administration – to make it easier to subject nonbank financial companies to prudential supervision.

The letter requests that the “updated guidance be rescinded and that FSOC should take a holistic approach to any designation process changes that emphasize cost-benefit analysis.”