Rounds, Tester Introduce Bill to Reduce Unnecessary Regulatory Costs for Nonbank Financial Institutions

Press Release

U.S. Senators Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced legislation to lower costs for investors. The Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act would eliminate ineffective costs for nonbank financial institutions that have not been designated as systemically important by removing Dodd Frank's bank-centric, mandatory stress test requirement.

"Asset managers have a completely different business model than a traditional bank," said Rounds. "Therefore, applying bank-centric stress tests is misguided, and the high compliance costs that accompany them will ultimately be borne by investors. I'm pleased to introduce this bipartisan legislation to reduce unnecessary regulatory costs in our capital markets."

Specifically, this legislation amends the stress test requirements under section 165(i) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (P.L. 111-203) to provide relief for nonbanks from bank-centric stress tests. To the extent stress tests may be useful in certain contexts, this legislation allows the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, their primary regulators, to conduct periodic stress tests for nonbank financial companies.

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