Dive Brief:
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has left the Network for Greening the Financial System, the regulator said Tuesday.
- “The OCC’s primary mission is to ensure the safety, soundness and fairness of national banks and federal savings associations,” Acting Comptroller Rodney Hood said in a statement. Participation in the coalition “extends well beyond the OCC’s statutory responsibilities and does not align with our regulatory mandate.”
- The OCC follows the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury Department, which all left the NGFS last month, around the time of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Dive Insight:
The departure was announced a day after Hood, a former National Credit Union Administration chair, became acting comptroller.
“While severe weather events may be a broader societal concern, they do not fall within the OCC's statutory mandate,” Hood said in the Feb. 11 statement announcing the exit. “Going forward, the OCC's focus must singularly remain on fulfilling our core mission.”
The OCC joined the NGFS in July 2021, the same month the agency appointed its first climate change risk officer. At the time, the agency said the newly created position would “significantly expand the agency’s capacity to collaborate with stakeholders and to promote improvements in climate change risk management at banks.”
Yue Chen serves as the agency’s climate risk officer and has held the position since 2022. Hood’s Tuesday statement did not elaborate on whether the OCC would continue to maintain a climate risk officer among its leadership roles.
NGFS was established in 2017 with the aim of incorporating climate change and related risks into the financial agenda of global central banks and supervising bodies. The coalition’s membership covers 100% of global systemic banks and 80% of the internationally active insurance groups, according to its website.
