Supervisory Research Forum

Join SURF

Join the SURF community to receive quarterly information about upcoming SURF sponsored events. You can also contact us at SYS.SURF@phil.frb.org. We welcome your interest and feedback.

Events

We sponsor seminars, panels, workshops, and conferences in consumer finance, financial innovations, digitalization, payments, financial climate risks, and, more broadly, supervision and financial stability.

Forthcoming events:

• The Mortgage Market Research Conference is a forum for the presentation and discussion of academic research on topics related to mortgages and the mortgage market. The conference will primarily focus on the residential mortgage market, although research on commercial mortgages is also welcome. In addition, the conference will feature a number of policy-oriented panel discussions that examine current issues and market trends, comprising policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. 
  
  Interested authors should submit a PDF version of their paper to our submission portal. There is no submission fee. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, February 1, 2024. 

Highlights from recent events:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted the Seventh Annual Fintech Conference on September 7–8, 2023. The goal of the conference series has been to provide a platform for fintech experts from various backgrounds to come together to discuss emerging issues in financial technology, their impact, and the appropriate policy responses.

The Supervisory Policy Forum (SURF) in partnership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) collaborated in the latest meeting of our SURF interagency seminar series. In this seminar, Professor Maziar Peihani presented his work, “Resolution of Small and Medium-Sized Institutions: Back to Basics?”

Additional interagency seminars organized by SURF in the Fall of 2023:

• September 19, 2023: Competition and Customer Acquisition in the U.S. Credit Card Market, Dan Grodzicki, OCC. 
• October 17, 2023: Regulation and Market Power: Evidence from Manufactured Home Loans, Helen Banga, CFPB.
• December 12, 2023: Internal Loan Ratings, Supervision, and Procyclicality Leverage, Steve Karolyi, OCC.

View additional prior events in our Youtube playlist and our events repository. Visit also our Calendar of Events.

Recent Research from the SURF Network

The SURF community is actively involved in advancing the frontier of knowledge in risk management, financial institutions, and financial markets. Here we highlight some of the most recent research and policy work.

• The Opioid Epidemic and Consumer Credit Supply: Evidence from Credit Cards – Sumit Agarwal, Wenli Li, Raluca A. Roman & Nonna Sorokina
• CMBS Market Evolution and Emerging Risks – Xudong (Sean) An, Larry Cordell & Nicholas Smith
• Did Fintech Loans Default More During the COVID-19 Pandemic? Were Fintech Firms “Cream Skimming” the Best Borrowers? – Julapa Jagtiani, Catharine Lemieux & Brandon Goldstein
• Social Capital and Mortgages – Xudong (Sean) An, Sadok El Ghoul, Omrane Guedhami, Ross Levine & Raluca A. Roman
• The Role of Bank-Fintech Partnerships in Creating a More Inclusive Banking System – Alan Chernoff & Julapa Jagtiani
• Failing Just Fine: Assessing Careers of Venture Capital-backed Entrepreneurs via a Non-Wage Measure – Natee Amornsiripanitch, Paul A. Gompers, George Hu, Will Levinson & Vladimir Mukharlyamov
• Lending by Servicing: Monetary Policy Transmission Through Shadow Banks – Isha Agarwal, Malin Hu, Raluca A. Roman & Keling Zheng
• California Wildfires, Property Damage, and Mortgage Repayment – Siddhartha Biswas, Mallick Hossain & David Zink
• Not Cashing In on Cashing Out: An Analysis of Low Cash-Out Refinance Rates – Mallick Hossain, Igor Livshits & Collin Wardius
• The Age Gap in Mortgage Access – Natee Amornsiripanitch
• Why Are Residential Property Tax Rates Regressive? – Natee Amornsiripanitch
• Inequality in the Time of COVID-19: Evidence from Mortgage Delinquency and Forbearance – Xudong (Sean) An, Larry Cordell, Liang Geng & Keyoung Lee
• Climate Change and Consumer Finance: A Very Brief Literature Review – José Canals-Cerdá & Raluca A. Roman

View prior highlighted research.

Contact us if you would like to propose research to be highlighted in the SURF webpage.

Other News of Interest to the SURF Network

The Federal Reserve Board issued its latest biannual Supervision and Regulation report, which summarizes banking conditions and supervisory and regulatory developments. The report indicates that financial conditions remained sound as almost all banks reported capital above regulatory minimums, liquidity remained ample, and delinquencies were historically low. However, credit risk has increased, and banks have increased their loss provisions in anticipation of future low deterioration.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System released the hypothetical scenarios for its annual stress test, which helps ensure that large banks are able to lend to households and businesses even in a severe recession. This year, 23 banks will be tested against a severe global recession, with heightened stress in both commercial and residential real estate markets as well as in corporate debt markets.

The Federal Reserve has published the Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee (LISCC) Program Manual. The manual describes the structure, governance, supervisory process, and communication methods that the Board of Governors uses when supervising large, systemically important firms.

The Federal Reserve Board announced its first pilot climate scenario analysis exercise involving the six largest banks. The exercise is designed to enhance supervisors and firms understanding of climate-related financial risks.