FINANCE BRIEF: Bank Examiner Exits Risk Regulators’ SVB Fixes

The Federal Reserve and FDIC are struggling to hire bank examiners and retain veterans as regulators work to roll out rules aimed at preventing more bank failures and industry turmoil.

Fed supervision staff shrank 3% last year from 2016, even as commercial lenders’ assets surged more than 40%, to roughly $22 trillion. At the FDIC, more than a third of the agency’s risk-management employees will be eligible to retire by 2027, up from 18% in 2022. Resignations among its examiners-in-training in the past two years occurred at rates greater than before the pandemic.

Pay that can’t keep up with the ...