Priority Open Recommendations: Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Fast Facts

Each year, we make more than 1,000 recommendations to help the federal government save money, address issues on our High Risk List, and significantly improve government operations.

This letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency outlines 2 open recommendations that it should prioritize. For example, OCC should coordinate with other federal financial regulators to identify and address blockchain risks.

OCC did not implement these same recommendations we identified as a priority last year. We regularly update priority recommendations here.

Highlights

What GAO Found

In August 2023, GAO identified two priority recommendations for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The recommendations call for the following:

• Developing a coordination mechanism with other federal financial regulators to identify and address blockchain risks.
• Collaborating with other financial regulators to communicate with banks that have third-party relationships with financial technology lenders about using alternative data in underwriting.

As of May 2024, OCC had not implemented these priority recommendations. We are not adding any new priority recommendations this year.

Fully implementing these open recommendations could significantly improve OCC's efforts to supervise and examine the operations of its chartered banks

Why GAO Did This Study

Priority open recommendations are the GAO recommendations that warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies because their implementation could save large amounts of money; improve congressional and/or executive branch decision-making on major issues; eliminate mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or ensure that programs comply with laws and funds are legally spent, among other benefits. Since 2015, GAO has sent letters to selected agencies to highlight the importance of implementing such recommendations.

For more information, contact Daniel Garcia-Diaz at (202) 512-8678 or garciadiazd@gao.gov.

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