Regulation D amendments and Regulation CC implications; SBA PPP reopens

It has been a little over a month since the Federal Reserve changed the reserve requirements for transaction accounts. At the time, many credit unions asked what the reserve requirement changes meant for Regulation D and the six-transaction limitation that is found in definitions section of Regulation D for a share account to be considered a “savings deposit” for reserve purposes. As background, this past NAFCU Compliance Blog post provides an overview of this particular provision of Regulation D including a chart of which kinds of transactions were historically restricted to a limit of six under the rule.

NAFCU has continually advocated for the Federal Reserve to modernize the rule and revisit this limitation, including in a March 19, 2020 letter. On Friday, April 24, 2020 the Fed issued an interim final rule that removes the six-transaction limitation from Regulation D’s definition of “savings deposit.” This rule has an applicability date of April 23, 2020 meaning credit unions can follow it now, and will be formally effective once it is published in the Federal Register The rule  permits credit unions to “suspend enforcement of the six transfer limit and to allow their [members] to make an unlimited number of convenient transfers and withdrawals from their savings deposits.”

In addition to removing the six-transaction limitation from Regulation D’s definition of savings deposit, the interim final rule also amends the definition of “transaction account” so that savings deposits are no longer excluded from that definition. This is in revised section 204.2(e)(2):

 

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