Briefs · No. 1 · Supervisory text through 2026Q1 · latest full year 2025
The Supervisory Landscape
What the OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC are focused on right now — and how it compares to 35 years of supervisory attention.
Two years after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, has supervision moved on? The written record says it has not. Liquidity commands a larger share of the Federal Reserve's published attention than at any point since 1989, when our modern series begins. The FDIC's emphasis on deposit stability stands at its highest since 2006. Supervisory attention followed the event rather than anticipating it, and it has not yet begun to decay.
Beneath the shared preoccupation with funding, the agencies are diverging rather than converging. Consumer protection absorbs more than half of the FDIC's guidance output. Systemic and market risk dominate the Federal Reserve's. Compliance and governance lead the OCC's. Each agency's leading topic is nearly absent from the other two. A banker who reads only her primary regulator's output forms a materially different picture of what supervision cares about than a banker who reads another's.
The structural backdrop is unchanged. The past four quarters recorded six new charters against 169 closures. Consolidation, not entry, remains the industry's default state.
Fed — Liquidity Risk attention at its highest on record.
OCC — Governance attention at its highest since 2004.
FDIC — Deposit Stability attention at its highest since 2006.
OCC — Fintech & Innovation attention at its highest since 2020.
By agency
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
The OCC's year was about conduct and control, not balance sheets. Compliance took the largest share of its output, and governance emphasis reached its highest level since 2004, the year the agency's preemption rules took effect and its posture last shifted this visibly. Attention to fintech and innovation is at its highest since 2020, consistent with the charter questions now before the agency. Credit is present but secondary. Capital barely registers.
| Domain | Share of attention | Rank in own history |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance | 29% | 58th percentile |
| Governance | 18% | highest since 2004 |
| Credit Risk | 13% | 53th percentile |
| Fintech & Innovation | 11% | highest since 2020 |
| Interest-Rate Risk | 9% | 79th percentile |
Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve reads as the macroprudential supervisor it has become. Systemic risk, credit conditions, and market risk absorb three-quarters of its published attention, and liquidity, the domain that failed in 2023, stands at a record high in our series. The Financial Stability Report agenda has effectively become the supervisory agenda.
| Domain | Share of attention | Rank in own history |
|---|---|---|
| Systemic Risk | 31% | 38th percentile |
| Credit Risk | 24% | 36th percentile |
| Market Risk | 23% | highest since 2022 |
| Liquidity Risk | 19% | highest on record |
| Cyber Risk | 3% | highest since 2021 |
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The FDIC is speaking to the liability side of the bank. Consumer protection took more than half of its guidance in the latest year, a level without precedent in our series, and deposit stability stands at its highest emphasis since 2006. The asset side, credit above all, has receded to a residual share.
| Domain | Share of attention | Rank in own history |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer Protection | 57% | 65th percentile |
| Deposit Stability | 31% | highest since 2006 |
| Capital Adequacy | 5% | 25th percentile |
| BSA / AML | 3% | highest since 2019 |
| Credit Risk | 1% | 5th percentile |
The long view
The modern series can be read against the full historical record. Splicing current publications onto the agencies' annual reports extends the comparison to 1863: credit's surge into 2008, the long postwar climb of compliance, and the present liquidity episode sit on one timeline.
Reports and handbooks
The examination handbooks tell a slower story than the reports, and the gap between the two is the useful signal. Liquidity and systemic risk are elevated in current reports but remain thin in the codified examination apparatus. Compliance and governance are the reverse: modest in this year's talk, dominant in the durable instructions examiners carry into banks. The history of such gaps is not encouraging for the current episode. Comprehensive handbook revision has lagged major operational events by two to three years, and attention that is not codified decays.
The quarter in numbers
| Net new charters | -163 | 2025Q2–2026Q1: 6 chartered, 169 closed |
|---|---|---|
| Most aligned domains | Credit Risk, Consumer Protection, Liquidity Risk — drawing simultaneous attention across agencies | |
The question for next year is whether liquidity attention decays or gets codified. Event-driven supervisory attention has a measured half-life of roughly four to five years. Handbook revision is the mechanism that converts attention into procedure before the memory fades. Which force wins is observable, and we will report it.
Figures are computed from the Attention Monitor and related series; historical comparisons are against each agency's own record. See the data pages for construction and downloads.