OCC Enforcement Actions

Key dates

2026-08-27

The OCC issued Bulletin 2026-42 announcing the notice of proposed rulemaking.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to inventory open and recently closed MRAs arising from alleged legal or regulatory violations and assess whether each matter would satisfy one or more of the proposed substantive-violation criteria.
• Firms should consider strengthening documentation linking examination findings to duration, frequency, systemic characteristics, financial-condition effects, books-and-records impacts, customer harm, restitution, or insider misconduct.
• Banks may wish to separate remediation plans for legal or regulatory violations from broader supervisory enhancements, because the proposal would limit examiner authority over technical violations to directing correction of the violation itself.
• Compliance and examination-management teams should consider preparing comments or internal positions on the undefined terms more than minimal, systemic, pattern, and meaningfully impact, including how those terms should be applied to isolated but high-severity events.
• Management may wish to review escalation thresholds so that technical-violation treatment does not result in under-escalation of recurring findings that could become systemic or satisfy the proposed substantive criteria.
• Banks should monitor the Federal Register publication of the notice of proposed rulemaking and calculate the 30-day comment period from that publication date rather than from the OCC bulletin date.
• Legal and regulatory-change teams may wish to assess this proposal alongside the OCC-FDIC final rule and related supervisory reforms concerning unsafe or unsound practices, MRAs, and material financial risk, while treating the proposal as nonfinal until adopted.

What changed

The proposed rule would provide that the OCC may issue an MRA for a violation of a banking or banking-related law or regulation only when the violation is substantive. A violation would be substantive when its nature, duration, frequency, or severity could meaningfully impact the bank or its customers, and at least one of five criteria would need to be met: the violation is systemic or constitutes a pattern; it has had or could reasonably be expected to have a direct, clear, predictable, and more than minimal impact on the bank's financial condition; it has had or could reasonably be expected...

Key dates

2026-08-27

OCC issued revised PPM 5310-3 and PPM 5400-11; PPM 5310-3 replaces the May 25, 2023 manual, PPM 5400-11 replaces the February 27, 2026 version, and OCC Bulletin 2023-16 is rescinded.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to map open MRAs, enforcement orders, capital directives, and supervisory findings against the new material-harm, Deposit Insurance Fund risk, and substantive-violation thresholds.
• Banks should consider reviewing issue-management taxonomies and governance procedures so that MRAs, other violations, and supervisory observations are recorded and escalated according to their distinct consequences.
• Board and committee reporting processes may warrant review because supervisory observations do not automatically require board presentation or a corrective-action plan, whereas MRAs and enforcement actions remain subject to formal remediation and validation expectations.
• Large and complex banks should consider reassessing whether deficiencies that might previously have produced a community-bank-level supervisory response could receive faster escalation under the revised tailoring framework.
• Banks with existing enforcement actions may wish to assess whether their remediation evidence demonstrates substantial compliance with the essential requirements of each order and whether remaining issues are minor and isolated.
• Capital management teams may wish to review procedures for the institution of and termination of individual minimum capital ratios under the revised enforcement manual.
• Legal and regulatory change teams should monitor Federal Register publication of the joint OCC-FDIC final rule and calculate the actual effective date rather than relying on the bulletin date.
• Internal audit and compliance functions may wish to preserve objective factual support for responses to MRAs and other supervisory communications, particularly where the bank believes an issue does not meet the new risk-based threshold.

What changed

Revised PPM 5310-3 replaces the May 25, 2023 version and structures the OCC enforcement framework around escalation, tailoring, and focus. The OCC generally intends to provide banks an opportunity to remediate deficiencies through supervision before initiating a Section 8 enforcement action, although it retains authority to act at any time when legally supportable and warranted.

Key dates

2026-08-27

OCC revised PPM 5310-3 and PPM 5400-11, issued Bulletin 2026-41, and published the proposed rulemaking notice concerning substantive and technical violations. The proposed rule's 30-day comment period begins only upon Federal Register publication.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to map open and recently closed MRAs and enforcement actions against the revised material-financial-risk threshold and the stated tailoring factors of capital structure, complexity, activities, and asset size.
• Banks should consider documenting objective facts, legal violations, financial-risk consequences, customer impact, duration, frequency, severity, and remediation status supporting the classification and closure of examination findings.
• Large and complex banks may wish to reassess escalation risk because the OCC expressly permits enforcement action for practices that might not produce the same response at a community bank.
• Banks should consider reviewing corrective-action plans to confirm that each action is directly tied to a specific deficiency and is proportionate to the risk, while preserving evidence of substantial compliance with existing orders.
• Compliance teams may wish to distinguish substantive violations from potential technical violations in issue-management inventories, including systemic or repeated conduct, customer restitution, books-and-records impacts, financial-condition effects, and insider misconduct.
• Banks should consider monitoring the Federal Register for publication of the proposed rule and calculating the 30-day comment period from that publication date; affected institutions may wish to submit comments on the proposed substantive-versus-technical framework.
• Examiners may identify lower-level weaknesses as supervisory observations rather than MRAs; banks should consider maintaining internal governance and risk records for such observations without assuming that the OCC may require a board action plan or track remediation in the same manner as an MRA.

What changed

Revised PPM 5310-3, Bank Enforcement Action and Related Matters, replaces the May 25, 2023 version and emphasizes escalation, tailoring, and focused corrective action. The OCC generally expects to provide a bank an opportunity to remediate deficiencies through supervision before taking an enforcement action under section 8 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, although it retains authority to act at any time when legally supportable.

Key dates

2026-08-27

OCC and FDIC issued the joint final rule through OCC Bulletin 2026-40. The bulletin applies to all OCC-supervised banks; it does not state the Federal Register publication date, effective date, or a firm compliance deadline.

Suggested considerations

• Firms should identify the final rule’s Federal Register publication and effective date, because the OCC bulletin itself does not state either date or a compliance deadline, and should monitor OCC and FDIC implementation guidance before relying on any transition treatment.
• Compliance teams may wish to inventory open MRAs, supervisory recommendations, enforcement matters, and examination findings and map each item to the final rule’s material-financial-risk, DIF-risk, actual-violation, or already-caused-harm criteria.
• Firms should consider separating board-level MRA remediation obligations from discretionary management responses to supervisory observations and documenting why a weakness is treated under one category rather than another.
• Risk and compliance functions may wish to enhance evidence files supporting assessments of likelihood, materiality, current and reasonably foreseeable conditions, and impacts on capital, asset quality, earnings, liquidity, and market-risk sensitivity.
• Banks should consider documenting how supervisory requirements and remediation plans are tailored to asset size, complexity, activities, capital structure, and other financial-risk factors, particularly where the institution has heightened systemic, concentration, liquidity, or operational complexity.
• Legal and compliance teams may wish to distinguish actual violations of banking or banking-related laws and regulations from prudential weaknesses, because an actual violation can support an MRA without separately satisfying the prudent-operation and material-risk test.
• Boards and senior management should consider reviewing governance procedures so that MRAs receive required escalation and tracking while supervisory observations are clearly identified as non-binding potential enhancements.
• Firms should consider preparing a process for requesting and retaining the objective facts and reasoning underlying an MRA or unsafe-and-unsound-practice determination, as the rule requires examiners to share that basis.

What changed

An unsafe or unsound practice is now defined as a practice, act, or failure to act that is contrary to generally accepted standards of prudent operation and either is likely, if continued, to materially harm the bank’s financial condition or present a material risk of loss to the Deposit Insurance Fund, or has already materially harmed the bank’s financial condition. “Likely” requires more than a merely possible risk; relevant financial-condition effects include impacts on capital, asset quality, earnings, liquidity, and sensitivity to market risk.

Key dates

2026-08-27

OCC and FDIC issued the final rule and OCC published Bulletin 2026-40 describing its application to OCC-supervised banks.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to map existing and anticipated MRAs, enforcement commitments, supervisory recommendations, and examination findings against the new material-financial-risk and actual-violation criteria.
• Firms should consider separating board-level corrective-action items from nonbinding supervisory observations and documenting why each issue does or does not meet the MRA threshold.
• Risk and compliance functions may wish to update issue-taxonomy and escalation procedures to assess impacts on capital, asset quality, earnings, liquidity, sensitivity to market risk, and the Deposit Insurance Fund.
• Banks should consider retaining objective evidence and documented reasoning supporting materiality assessments, including institution-specific factors such as asset size, complexity, activities, and capital structure.
• Management and boards may wish to review outstanding policies, process, and documentation findings to determine whether they remain mandatory remediation matters, are better treated as supervisory observations, or independently constitute violations of banking or banking-related law.
• OCC-supervised banks should monitor the related examination guidance and assess whether planned lookbacks, independent-consultant requirements, or suspicious-activity review scopes are affected by the revised supervisory approach described in industry reporting.
• Firms should track Federal Register publication and calculate the 60-day effective date once publication occurs; the August 27, 2026 announcement date is not itself the effective date.

What changed

An unsafe or unsound practice is now defined as a practice, act, or failure to act that is contrary to generally accepted standards of prudent operation and either, if continued, is likely to materially harm the bank’s financial condition or present a material risk of loss to the Deposit Insurance Fund, or has already materially harmed the bank’s financial condition. Relevant financial-condition impacts include capital, asset quality, earnings, liquidity, and sensitivity to market risk; reputation concerns unrelated to financial condition are excluded.

Key dates

2026-06-24

Venezuela experienced a pair of strong earthquakes off the northern coast west of Caracas, triggering the humanitarian crisis referenced by the agencies.

2026-07-27

FinCEN issued a substantively similar statement of enforcement policy regarding Venezuela-related financial services.

2026-07-31

The OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, and NCUA issued the joint enforcement policy.

2026-07-31

Start of the period during which authorized financial services to persons or entities in Venezuela are covered by the enforcement commitment.

2027-01-29 Deadline

End of the covered period for the joint enforcement commitment.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to confirm whether current Venezuela-related activity falls within the scope of authorized financial services covered by the joint statement.
• Institutions may wish to verify that their BSA compliance program remains current and that ongoing controls reflect reasonable efforts to comply during the relief period.
• Firms may wish to check whether they have had any final FinCEN or OCC enforcement action involving BSA violations in the prior 24 months before relying on the policy.
• Sanctions teams may wish to confirm continued compliance with all applicable OFAC-administered sanctions regulations and authorizations.
• Institutions with Venezuela exposure may wish to document how they will evidence reliance on the policy and monitor the January 29, 2027 end date.

What changed

The agencies stated that eligible U.S. financial institutions that choose to provide authorized financial services to persons or entities in Venezuela will not be subject to supervisory action, including a citation for a violation of law, or enforcement action related to a Bank Secrecy Act requirement, for those services. The commitment is limited to authorized financial services provided from 2026-07-31 through 2027-01-29 and applies only to statutes or regulations specifically addressed in the joint statement.

Key dates

2026-07-09

OCC Bulletin 2026-30 was issued, highlighting FinCEN’s updated Section 314(b) Fact Sheet.

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to review whether current Section 314(b) registration status is current and whether the institution has designated internal points of contact for information-sharing requests.
• Firms may wish to assess whether existing BSA/AML and fraud-monitoring procedures explicitly cover the newly highlighted examples of shareable information, including cyber-related data and video surveillance footage.
• Institutions may wish to confirm that information-sharing protocols limit disclosures to permissible Section 314(b) purposes and maintain security and confidentiality controls over information received from peers.
• Banks may wish to refresh training for BSA, fraud, and investigations staff on when sharing is permissible, including the safe-harbor conditions and the scope of eligible counterparties.
• Compliance teams may wish to verify that procedures for responding to requests and documenting reliance on Section 314(b) remain aligned with FinCEN’s updated fact sheet.

What changed

FinCEN’s updated Section 314(b) Fact Sheet clarifies that a participating financial institution may share information about suspected fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing, or other specified unlawful activities with any other financial institution eligible to participate in the Section 314(b) program.

Key dates

2026-06-22

OCC bulletin announcing the notice of proposed rulemaking was issued

2026-07-22 Deadline

Planned deadline for comments, if the Federal Register publication date aligns with the bulletin date and the OCC’s 30-day comment period is measured from publication

Suggested considerations

• Compliance teams may wish to assess whether the entity falls within the OCC-supervised PPSI category or within the state-qualified issuer population covered by OCC authority under the GENIUS Act.
• Firms may wish to review existing AML/CFT and sanctions controls against the BSA, FinCEN, and OFAC requirements referenced in the proposal, including reporting, monitoring, and risk assessment procedures.
• Compliance teams may wish to map governance, escalation, and record-sharing workflows to the proposed OCC-FinCEN consultation framework, particularly for potential significant supervisory or enforcement matters.
• Firms may wish to consider whether their current policies, procedures, and internal controls are sufficiently tailored to stablecoin-specific risks and whether additional board or senior management oversight would be needed.
• Compliance teams may wish to evaluate whether they should submit comments during the 30-day Federal Register comment period if aspects of the proposed framework could affect operating models or compliance design.

What changed

The proposed rule would require OCC-supervised PPSIs to comply with the BSA, sections 4(a)(5) and 4(a)(6)(B) of the GENIUS Act, and applicable FinCEN and OFAC regulations, including AML/CFT program, sanctions program, and reporting requirements. It would also create a supervision and enforcement framework for PPSI AML/CFT programs, so the OCC can take AML/CFT supervisory and enforcement action against covered issuers. The rule would establish a formal consultation process between the OCC and FinCEN when the OCC intends to initiate an AML/CFT enforcement action or a significant AML/CFT...