Congress established the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council in March 1979. The Council is an interagency body comprised of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Council also includes representation from five state financial regulators via the State Liaison Committee (SLC), and the Chair of the SLC serves as the sixth member of the Council.
As an interagency body, the Council’s actions are focused on promoting consistency in examination activities. While the Council is comprised of five regulatory agencies and the chair of the SLC, it does not regulate financial institutions. The Council’s jurisdiction is limited to prescribing uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions and making recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions. The Council also conducts schools for examiners employed by the five federal member agencies on the Council and makes those schools available to employees of state agencies that supervise financial institutions. Congress also tasked the Council with facilitating public access to data that depository institutions must disclose under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975.
The Appraisal Subcommittee
Congress established the Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) within the Council in 1989. The ASC oversees the real estate appraisal regulatory framework for federally related transactions. The Subcommittee’s mission is to provide federal oversight of state appraiser and appraisal management company regulatory programs and a monitoring framework for the Appraisal Foundation and the federal financial institutions regulatory agencies in their roles to protect federal financial and public policy interests in real estate appraisals utilized in federally related transactions.
