Confidential supervisory information includes bank examination reports, Matters Requiring Attention, supervisory correspondence and ratings. The banking agencies maintain that such materials are the property of the U.S. government, and unauthorized disclosure is prohibited.
Examination-related communications and examination ratings, as well as informal enforcement actions, are nonpublic.
- They are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
- The agencies argue that all exam-related information is government property, and that improperly disclosing it constitutes the conversion of federal property—a federal crime.
Agencies have designated a wide set of supervisory-related information as confidential supervisory information.
- Requests for information
- “Industry MRAs” (these MRAs are supervisory directives that are not specific to any one bank’s practices but instead are issued to multiple firms in essentially identical terms)
Specific CSI rules vary somewhat across agencies.
