Big banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. may face quicker reprimands for risk-management failures under a new Office of the Comptroller of the Currency effort set to be announced today, Bloomberg News reported. The national-bank regulator’s policy shift will remove hurdles to targeting lenders with certain enforcement actions, according to OCC Chief Counsel Amy Friend. The change follows Comptroller Thomas Curry’s push to clean up management at banks hit with billions of dollars in penalties over misdeeds in the wake of the 2008 credit crisis. Under the leadership of Curry, who took the helm in 2012, the OCC has extracted the largest penalties in its 150-year history. The agency fined London-based HSBC Holdings Plc a record $500 million in 2012 for money-laundering faults and has penalized JPMorgan twice — reaching a $300 million settlement over the London Whale trading losses and a $350 million agreement resolving allegations that the bank failed to report suspicions about Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
