Quarles lays out road map for bank regulations

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve’s top official on financial regulation is putting forward a wide-ranging agenda for improving the way the nation’s banks are regulated, saying he wants to focus on “efficiency, transparency and simplicity.”

Randal Quarles, the Fed’s vice chairman for supervision, says that he is looking at improving the Fed’s annual stress test of the nation’s biggest banks – the capital cushion banks are required to hold against loan losses – and the “living wills” the biggest banks have to draw up to show how they can be shut down if they become insolvent.

Quarles, a Utah investment executive, was nominated by President Donald Trump to be the point person in administration efforts to loosen the regulations put in place in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.