U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould has abstained from a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) vote on staff comments related to July 2025 Dodd-Frank Act Section 165(d) resolution plans.
The FDIC and the Federal Reserve Board published comment letters covering several resolution plans filed in July 2025.
Resolution plans, commonly described as living wills, are required to set out how a banking organization would resolve itself in an orderly manner if it faced serious financial difficulties or failures.
The agencies conducted a joint assessment of the 2025 filings of the eight largest and most complex domestic banking organizations, along with 56 foreign banking organizations.
Both the Federal Reserve and the FDIC said they found “no deficiencies or deficiencies” in the latest plans, and noted that previous issues had been “satisfactorily addressed” in these presentations.
For his part, Gould issued a statement regarding his abstention from the FDIC’s vote on resolution plan feedback.
“I am abstaining from voting on the FDIC staff proposal on resolution plans for U.S. global systemically important banks (GSIBs) because I believe there are fundamental problems with the current resolution planning processes that remain unaddressed,” he said.
According to him, the response letters are based on and continue a “seriously flawed and, in my opinion, extralegal process.”
Gould recalled comments he made five months earlier, where he outlined legal and conceptual objections to resolution planning at both the bank and holding company levels.
He said work is underway to change the FDIC’s requirements for insured depository institution (CIDI) resolution plans, but that Section 165(d) plans have not yet been the focus, and he said that context informed his abstention.
Gould said the latest material does not establish new “deficiencies” or deficiencies.
He said the current letters refer to companies complying with additional elements that had been introduced through previous comments, including “assurance” and “contingency strategies.”
He noted that in 2024 the Federal Reserve and FDIC told US GSIBs, through feedback letters, that they expect an “assurance framework” for resolution capabilities, made up of at least five elements listed in those letters.
According to the boss, the process has moved from planning to planning plus capabilities to planning plus capabilities plus capability assurance.
He added that there is “no assurance” that requirements added through feedback letters will stop increasing.
As for “contingency strategies,” Gould said the proposed letters outline approaches to keeping critical operations running “through a variety of alternative resolution scenarios when financial resources are significantly less than performance needs after the covered company files for bankruptcy.”