On November 14, 2012, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a Notice of Compliance Extension for the application of its lending limits rule to certain credit exposures arising from derivatives and securities financing transactions. The proposed extension delays the application of the lending limits rule to these transactions from January 1, 2013 to April 1, 2013.

In June 2012, the OCC issued an interim final rule implementing Section 610 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which for the purposes of bank lending limits, extends the definition of loans and extensions of credit to include certain credit exposures arising from:

Banks were originally expected to be fully compliant with these change by January 1, 2013 (see Legal Update, OCC Modifies Bank Lending Limits to Include Derivatives and Securities Financing Transactions).

The extension is based on industry comments on the interim final rule, which led the OCC to conclude that banks would not have sufficient time to implement appropriate policies and procedures to comply with these changes by the January 1 deadline. Despite this extension, the OCC retains the ability to address credit exposures that present undue concentrations on a case-by-case basis.

To learn more about the OCC bank lending limits rule, see Practice Note, US Banking Law: Overview: Lending Limits for National Banks.