Congressional Republicans yesterday made their case for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to end the practice of bringing nonbank financial institutions such as insurers under greater supervision if they’re deemed too-big-to-fail by the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), MorningConsult.com reported. In a letter, 10 of the 12 GOP members of the Senate Banking Committee told Mnuchin, who heads FSOC, that the council’s process for designating nonbanks systemically important financial institutions “lacks transparency and accountability, insufficiently tracks data, and does not have a consistent methodology for determinations.” The senators, including Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho, said they hope Munchin “will review the policies and procedures” for labeling nonbank SIFIs. The correspondence did not mention whether the Trump administration should drop its legal defense of FSOC in a federal court challenge of MetLife Inc.’s SIFI label. On the other side of the Capitol, Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), who heads the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, told reporters Tuesday that ending nonbank designations “should be, at the very least, where we start” the process of changing FSOC practices.
