Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC)

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) is an interagency body of the U.S. government made up of several U.S. financial regulatory agencies. The FFIEC was created on March 10, 1979, and is meant to promote consistent and uniform standards for financial institutions; the council also oversees the appraisal of real estate in the U.S.

As an interagency regulatory body, the FFIEC creates uniform standards and principles for examination of financial institutions by all five of its composite agencies. It further makes recommendations intended to maintain uniformity in how financial institutions are regulated at the federal level.

The FFIEC develops standardized reporting systems for federally supervised banks and financial institutions, the holding companies associated with them, and the nonfinancial subsidiaries of both the financial institutions and their holding companies. In this capacity, the FFIEC trains examiners who work for the council’s member agencies. Those training programs are also open to employees of state regulatory agencies.

In 1980, the council was given the responsibility of facilitating public access to mortgage information from financial institutions in accordance with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975. HMDA asks lenders to identify the sex, race, and income of those applying for or obtaining mortgages. This data allows the FFIEC to monitor trends in housing and mortgage borrowing and lending, such as, for example, a reported increase in mortgage borrowing by blacks and Hispanics as of 1993.

Following the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), the FFIEC established the Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) to regulate real estate appraisal in the U.S. The ASC does this via the Appraisal Foundation, which is made up of the Appraiser Qualifications Board (AQB), the Appraisal Practices Board (APB), and the Appraisal Standards Board (ASB).