Bank Exams Will Regain Human Touch When Pandemic Recedes

Federal regulators conducted bank examinations remotely during the pandemic, but both sides are eager to restore the human element of supervision in the post-Covid world.

The agencies that supervise banks—the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency—had been looking to incorporate technologies to review loan data and bank operations even before the pandemic.

Those tools proved vital when Covid-19 forced everyone to hunker down, curtail travel and practice social distancing.

But the pandemic also showed limits to what examiners and the banks they oversee can do without being in the same ...