More than six months after the release of final Volcker Rule regulations, banking organizations continue to grapple with a long list of interpretive questions and an opaque process for seeking clarity from the Volcker agencies.  Regulatory silence broke for a brief moment this past week in the form of a short interagency FAQ and, from the OCC, interim examination guidelines for assessing banking entities’ progress toward Volcker Rule compliance during the conformance period.

Neither document is a significant source of new guidance or interpretive gloss.  Nonetheless, the OCC guidelines evidence the staff’s intention to begin detailed inquiries into banks’ conformance efforts to date and suggest a higher standard for interim compliance than many may have expected.  It remains to be seen whether the other Volcker agencies take the same approach.

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