FDIC Chairman Urges FASB to Delay Certain Accounting Rules Amid Pandemic — 2020-03-19

WASHINGTON – Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Jelena McWilliams today sent a letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) urging a delay in transitions to and exclusions from certain accounting rules, including:  Excluding COVID-19-related modifications from being considered a concession when determining a troubled debt restructuring (TDR) classification;  Permitting financial institutions currently subject to the current expected credit losses (CECL) methodology an option to postpone implementation of CECL given the current economic environment; and  Imposing a moratorium on the effective date for those institutions that are not currently required to implement CECL to allow these financial institutions to focus on immediate business challenges relating to the impacts of the current pandemic and its effect on the financial system. "Today we are confronting new and uncertain challenges in view of the worldwide pandemic," Chairman McWilliams wrote.