Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman said a preliminary review of the 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) found that supervisors knew its core risks months before the collapse but did not act on the information in time.
In published remarks dated October 14, Bowman said she had commissioned the independent review earlier in 2026. According to her account, frontline examiners, specialists and Reserve Bank and Board staff knew about SVB's interest-rate and liquidity exposures at least nine full months before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took it into receivership.
She said the bank had 54 matters requiring attention or immediate attention between 2019 and its failure, yet none required it to address its core financial risks. The review described attention to processes, governance and controls taking precedence over reducing those underlying exposures, she said.
Bowman linked delayed decisions to unclear authority and accountability. She said the Fed was considering a clearer division of responsibility between Board and Reserve Bank staff, defined decision rights for examiners and supervisory leaders, and direct routes for examination teams to escalate issues to senior supervision leadership.
Bowman specified that her remarks reflected her own views, not necessarily those of other Federal Reserve Board or Federal Open Market Committee members.
