Michelle W Bowman: The new landscape for banking competition

Speech by Ms Michelle W Bowman, Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the 2022 Community Banking Research Conference, sponsored by the Federal Reserve, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri, 28 September 2022. 

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
30 September 2022

Good morning and thank you, Jim, it's great to be back here in St. Louis for this year's research conference.1 While the Federal Reserve learned a lot about how to operate virtually during these past two-and-a-half years of the pandemic, there are certain interactions and discussions that are just better face to face. For me, this conference is one of them.

It's also significant that we're able to be here in person to commemorate the 10th year of these proceedings. I'd like to share a few thoughts on how we got here.

Back in 2013, in the wake of the financial crisis and the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) created this conference, based on the understanding that research plays a vital role in shaping our nation's supervisory and regulatory policy. Simply put, good research leads to good policy, and the decision was made to create a conference that could attract high-caliber research on community banking from all over the world.

The conference was also designed to be a forum for multiple stakeholders-researchers, policymakers, and community bankers-to come together annually to share insights and perspectives, all in the interest of better informing current and future research. In my view, this gathering has certainly delivered on, and expanded upon, these promises.