U.S. Senator Katie Britt Leads Republican Colleagues in Urging for Review of Key Bank Supervisory Process

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.), a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, led 10 of her Senate Banking Committee Republican colleagues, who also serve on the Banking Committee, in a letter to the federal bank regulators calling for a review of their Matters Requiring Attention (MRA) bank supervisory process.

Specifically, the letter commends the Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for recent efforts to enhance and tailor the federal bank supervisory and regulatory frameworks, and urges the agencies to also consider changes to the MRA process to address identified shortcomings. MRAs are findings issued by bank examiners that highlight deficiencies within a bank that require swift remediation to mitigate broader risk.

“If used effectively, these are valuable supervisory tools that can mitigate broader issues and maintain financial stability. However, we are concerned that the lack of structure, uniformity, and legal basis has allowed the MRA process to become increasingly opaque, ineffective, and inconsistent,” the Senators wrote.

The Senators continued, “MRAs are not explicitly mentioned in any law or regulation, and instead were created by regulatory agencies through informal guidance, without public notice or comment.” This has led to inconsistent application and fragmented interpretations that, “can create confusion for financial institutions, particularly around expectations for remediation, severity of findings, and regulatory consequences.”

The letter then highlights several flaws in the MRA process exposed following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March 2023: “Prior to its collapse, which cost the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund approximately $20 billion, SVB had a significant number of active MRAs and MRIAs – some even dating back multiple examination cycles.”

The Senators point out that of the 31 unresolved findings, several reflected known safety and soundness risks, yet despite the seriousness of these warnings, the bank failed to act and the regulators disregarded their own findings. On the other hand, many of the remaining MRAs focused on issues that did not pose a material financial threat to the bank – potentially obscuring or diverting attention from truly critical risks.

The Senators ultimately request the Federal Reserve, OCC and FDIC jointly assess and improve the MRA framework as part of their broader efforts to bring integrity and accountability back to federal bank supervision, and to avoid MRAs becoming just another “check-the-box” exercise or a subjective supervisory tool.

Full text of the letter can be found here.

Senator Britt has been a strong advocate for ensuring the federal bank supervisory and regulatory frameworks remain effective, properly tailored, and free of politicization. Earlier this year, she condemned the regulatory pressure banks faced by politicized regulators under the Biden Administration. In a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing on the practice of debanking, Senator Britt noted, “It is no secret that our financial regulators have becoming increasingly politicized over the last four years . . . When you’re prioritizing a social agenda or a political one, instead of actually ensuring that people have an opportunity and access to the American Dream, we’ve got to call that for what it is.”

In a March 2025 hearing with several key financial nominees, Senator Britt called for needed change to bank regulation noting, “Over the last few years, we’ve had agencies that prioritized speedy regulation over thoughtful policymaking. Rushing into policymaking without proper due diligence or justification.” She went on to highlight that after SVB’s failure in 2023, while each regulator failed to use every tool in their toolbox to prevent the bank’s collapse, still “they all said they needed more power and more authority to prevent that in the future. That is absolutely not how this should work, and it’s completely and totally unacceptable.” 

A video of Senator Britt’s full line of questioning can be viewed here.

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