Jonathan McKernan, a Republican director on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board, announced Monday that he is leaving his post as his term has expired.
McKernan, who has served on the board since 2023, said he’s vacating the seat was because the Trump administration named a new acting comptroller, Republican Rodney Hood, to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Hood also has a seat on the FDIC board. But agency rules mandate that no more than three of the FDIC’s five board members can be from the same political party. FDIC Acting Chair Travis Hill, Hood and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting director, Russ Vought are all Republicans. There are no Democrats on the board at the moment, as no one has been named to replace McKernan or to serve as vice chair, the role Hill inhabited before being named acting chief.
“It has been a great honor to serve on the FDIC Board,” McKernan wrote Monday on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. “I’ve every confidence that under the new FDIC leadership, the FDIC will succeed in its mission while also reversing the regulatory overreaches of the last few years.”
While at the FDIC, McKernan was vocal about ensuring asset managers don’t exert outsized influence on publicly traded banks, rather than being “merely passive investors.”
McKernan also advocated for timely approval of bank mergers, along with Hill, who outlined his priorities when he ascended to acting chair last month.
McKernan also sought clarity in interagency guidance on banks’ relationships with third-party vendors, including fintechs. His views on the challenges in bank-fintech partnership governance echoed those of Biden-era CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
During his tenure on the FDIC board, McKernan was the co-chair of a special committee that monitored law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton's review of sexual misconduct and toxic work culture allegations at the FDIC. In May, the independent review found “sexual harassment, discrimination, and other interpersonal misconduct” at the agency.
After the findings were released, the FDIC took more than five months to reach a consensus on investigating allegations of misconduct by agency executives. McKernan expressed frustration with this delay in reaching an agreement.
“Thanks to months of debate, delays, and false starts at the Board level, accountability for wrongdoing will be delayed until a year after the Cleary report and likely after some of these executives have left the FDIC,” McKernan said in a November statement. “There can be no doubt that, despite my and Vice Chairman Hill’s persistent efforts, FDIC leadership has failed to deliver prompt accountability.”
