Blaine Luetkemeyer: “I thank Chairman Hensarling for his tireless work in bringing this and so many other commonsense bills to the floor. I…”

“I thank Chairman Hensarling for his tireless work in bringing this and so many other commonsense bills to the floor. I also want to thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton) for his commitment to this issue. The lack of consistency and quality in the bank examination process has created serious problems for financial institutions and their customers. Mr. Tipton's legislation aims to remedy many of the issues we have heard about from the banks and credit unions in our congressional districts. H.R. 4545 will allow financial institutions to have supervisory determinations reviewed by a newly established independent examination review board. This will create uniformity among regulatory agencies, while making the overall exam process fair and efficient. The legislation includes several other key reforms, such as imposition of a reasonable time limit on examiners to provide exam results to institutions. It may seem like a simple request in the bill, a simple provision, but, today, institutions may wait as much as a year or more--in some cases, several years--to get the results of a single exam. How can you be expected to comply with regulations if the regulators don't get back to you in a timely fashion with their feedback? I myself spent several years as a bank examiner. The relationship between banker and examiner was a collegial one.…”