(Reuters) – The California financial regulator failed to pressure Silicon Valley Bank management to resolve known issues quickly enough before the lender collapsed in March, according to a report released Monday, in which the agency promised to perform better going forward.
The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) autopsy followed a scathing Federal Reserve report released last month in which the US central bank blamed its own poor oversight, reckless bank management and loosening of rules for contributing to the collapse of the SVB, which has now ranks third in US history.
Regulators have since vowed to tighten supervision of the banking sector, while lawmakers have also complained that officials are too slow to address poor risk management. Former SVB chief executive Gregory Becker is due to testify before Congress next week.
The DFPI played a supporting role, with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which could provide more staff for oversight, the main oversight of the SVB, according to a report released on Monday.
According to the report, SVB “has been slow to address deficiencies identified by regulators, and regulators have not taken adequate steps to ensure that SVB issues are resolved as soon as possible.”
Timing was of the essence partly due to the bank’s skyrocketing asset growth, which quadrupled in four years to exceed $200 billion by 2021, according to a report that says the California regulator will apply enhanced scrutiny to banks with 50 dollars. a billion or more assets and a high level of uninsured deposits is a factor that encouraged bank runs.
However, the report notes that in the old days, large amounts of uninsured deposits did not necessarily indicate increased risk, since accounts with large deposits were often held by corporate clients, who tended to rarely change banks.
The report also says the DFPI plans to require banks to consider how to manage the risks posed by social media and real-time withdrawals, which could amplify and accelerate bank runs. In just one eight-hour period on March 9, SVB depositors filed withdrawal applications for approximately $42 billion.
(This story has been repurposed to remove redundant text from point 1)
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison; editing by Aurora Ellis)