On April 30, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System released an Updated Statement of Supervisory Operating Principles for Federal Reserve supervisory staff. The updated statement supplements and supersedes the October 2025 statement and provides additional guidance on how Federal Reserve staff should conduct supervision of Board-supervised banking organizations.
The updated statement directs examiners to focus supervision on material financial risks, significant threats to safety and soundness, and violations of law or regulation. It also instructs staff not to devote excessive attention to processes, procedures, or documentation issues that do not pose material safety-and-soundness concerns. More specifically, the updated statement:
- Raises the threshold for MRAs and MRIAs. Matters Requiring Attention (MRAs) and Matters Requiring Immediate Attention (MRIAs) based on safety-and-soundness concerns generally should be issued only where staff determine in good faith that a deficiency could create a significant probability of significant harm to the banking organization’s financial condition.
- Creates a higher standard for certain enforcement actions. Enforcement actions based on unsafe or unsound practices generally require a determination that the practice could create an abnormal probability of abnormal harm to the banking organization’s financial condition. Abnormal is defined as “substantially higher than normal or significant.”
- Expands use of supervisory observations. If a banking organization self-identifies a deficiency and promptly begins remediation, the issue will presumptively be treated as a supervisory observation rather than an MRA or MRIA.
- Limits duplicative validation work. Examiners should generally rely on the institution’s internal audit validation when determining whether remediation is complete, unless the internal audit is ineffective, unsatisfactory, unavailable, or has not validated the remediation.
- Requires prompt termination of remediated items. Staff should terminate MRAs, MRIAs, and enforcement action requirements once the underlying deficiency has been fully remediated, rather than testing sustainability over time before closure.