The Federal Reserve’s top bank regulator on Wednesday said that supervisors could have done more to keep tabs on Silicon Valley Bank before it collapsed earlier this month.
The acknowledgment from Michael Barr, the vice chair for supervision at the Federal Reserve, was the most direct yet by a government official of possible oversight lapses leading up to the bank’s failures. Barr is leading an internal review of the agency’s oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, which is known as SVB.
“Whenever you have a bank failure like this, bank management clearly failed, supervisors failed, and our regulatory system failed,” Barr said Wednesday during a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee. He added that the Fed is reviewing its supervision and the ways that regulatory structure might have played a role.
