Most of these actions involve tailoring rules that treated community banks in the same way as larger, more complex institutions. For example, the Volcker rule was aimed at curbing proprietary trading by large banks, but it ended up creating significant compliance costs for community banks, which are not involved in this type of trading.
Many of the most important improvements to the Federal Reserve’s regulatory framework involve tailoring rules to fit to the size, business model, and risk profiles of community banks. For example, we raised the asset threshold for small banks to qualify for an 18-month exam cycle and similarly raised the threshold for small bank holding companies to be exempted from consolidated risk-based capital rules.