Michelle W Bowman: The role of research, data, and analysis in banking reforms
Speech by Ms Michelle W Bowman, Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at the 2023 Community Banking Research Conference, sponsored by the Federal Reserve System, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, St. Louis, Missouri, 4 October 2023.
The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.
It's a pleasure to be back in St. Louis for the annual Community Banking Research Conference. I am grateful for the continued partnership between the Federal Reserve, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and I would like to thank the conference organizing committee for putting together this important forum, now in its 11th year. This conference provides an excellent opportunity for policymakers to pause and reflect on the impact of current U.S. bank regulatory policies on the financial system. At the same time, we should also consider how alterations to these policies will influence the future of the broader banking system.
We get a view into these questions-the effectiveness of past policy choices and insights that can help shape future policy reforms-from several aspects of this conference, including, of course, the research that will be presented and from the results of the CSBS Annual Community Bank Survey. We also gain insight from the experience and perspectives of our participants: your questions and commentary throughout the next few days can provide important context about the intended and unintended consequences of past policy decisions. And the combined perspectives from the wide range of experts gathered here-the researchers, regulators, policymakers, and bankers-will provide us with valuable insights into how to better establish and calibrate bank regulatory and supervisory policy in the future.
Research, data, and analysis are essential to thoughtful bank regulatory reform. These tools can be used to identify issues that must be addressed or remediated; they can help us evaluate which elements of the current bank regulatory framework may be effective or ineffective, and they can help us craft reforms with a clearer understanding of the intended and unintended consequences. Together, these tools can help us develop and implement appropriate regulatory reforms that do not impair the long-term health or impede the future growth of our diverse U.S. banking system, enabling us to avoid the pitfalls of reforms that fail to accomplish these important goals.