Exit Interview with Jelena McWilliams, Part 1

As Jelena McWilliams prepares to leave office after an eventful three and a half years as FDIC chairman, she sat down with the ABA Banking Journal for a conversation on her tenure at the agency. While 2018 wasn’t that long ago, it feels worlds away—in terms of the time-is-a-flat-circle nature of the pandemic, but also in the landscape of bank innovation and racial justice. In part one of this two-part interview, McWilliams discusses: Where bank innovation stands in 2022 and how initiatives like FDITech are shaping the policy framework for innovation. Early results from FDITech initiatives around real-time data reporting and third-party due diligence. The agency's progress on standing up a standard-setting organization that can streamline vendor risk management and “challeng[e] core processors” to be more agile. The future of remote versus on-site FDIC exams in the post-COVID environment. A behind-the-scenes look at how the FDIC responded to the early days of the pandemic, including issuing guidance on troubled debt restructurings.