Overview
- The Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC jointly issued a final rule revising enhanced leverage standards for the largest banks to preserve Treasury market intermediation, with conforming changes to TLAC and long‑term debt rules.
- For depository institution subsidiaries, the enhanced supplementary leverage ratio is capped at 1%, setting an overall leverage requirement no higher than 4%.
- Regulators estimate overall capital will be broadly unchanged, with Tier 1 requirements at affected holding companies declining by less than 2%.
- An FDIC staff memo reported by Reuters projected average capital requirement reductions of 27% at depository subsidiaries, or about $213 billion, though holding company constraints would limit shareholder distributions.
- The rule takes effect April 1, 2026, with optional early adoption on January 1, 2026, and regulators separately proposed lowering the community bank leverage ratio to 8% with a four‑quarter grace period and a 60‑day comment period.