Footnoting Bank Supervision

Consider this press release from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,  the press release from Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc., and this story in the San Antonio Express-News discussing the Fed's Order approving the acquisition of WNB Bancshares of Odessa, Texas by San Antonio, Texas-based Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc.   

At December 31, 2013, WNB Bancshares had $1.5 billion in total assets and Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc. had $24.4 billion in total assets.  This small acquisition would grow Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc.'s total assets by only about 6%.

What catches your eye, tickles the antennae, and raises questions is footnote 33 on Page 19 of the Fed's merger approval.  It states:

"Cullen/Frost has committed not to engage in any expansionary activities, including branching within its existing market areas, until such time that the Board has deemed Cullen/Frost to have clearly developed a policy to support future expansion in its compliance program, including fair lending [my emphasis], and to hire additional staff with requisite knowledge and experience to manage and control the bank’s fair lending risk, which might be heightened by expansion." 

Now, if all factors were deemed satisfactory (the approval Order raises no compliance issues), why would the Fed even insert that footnote requiring the agreement of the bank to immediately refrain from any expansionary activities?   Not even one measly strip mall or street corner branch until the bank 'ups its game' in the area of compliance risk management, including the area of fair lending.  "No (more) soup for you!" as the old Seinfeld show character would say.

And what sets the mental klaxons sounding and sirens wailing is that one of the compliance management issues raised is fair lending.  Any bank examiner knows that fair lending is an electric and radioactive compliance issue - one of the few third rails of compliance supervision.  So much so that it ranks as high, or higher, on the compliance scale than another high profile compliance issue - Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) compliance.

Bottom line, you just don't raise the hypersensitive issue of fair lending and not be expected to explain, in detail, why you demanded this stand-still commitment from the bank.  The Fed has not offered an explanation and, so far as I know, no one in authority has requested one.

Direct talk (and action) by the Fed has been supplanted by oblique and hazy references coupled with a significant corporate commitment to refrain from further expansion, all buried in a footnote on page 19 of the approval Order.  The Fed's press release introduction doesn't even mention it.

The folks at the Fed in Dallas and Washington ought to be looking sheepishly down at their shoes; they lost bank supervision style points on this one.  I just hope that the Fed's new Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee (LISCC), which has bank supervision responsibility for our nation's systemically important financial institutions, doesn't contract this same malady.  The Captains of Finance, black-eyed and bloodied from years of public floggings a more direct approach to bank supervision, surely noticed this little gem.