The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is to extend the comment period for the agency’s proposed rule on Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) membership by 60 days.
The comment period was previously set to close on 12 November 2014, which itself was 60 days after publication of the proposed rule in the Federal Register.
The proposed rule change, if adopted, will effectively exclude captive insurers from membership to any one of the 12 FHLBs.
The comment period will now close on 12 January 2015, and any made after this time will not be recognised by the FHFA.
The FHFA has stated that it is extending the comment period “in light of the importance of the issues addressed in the proposed rule, the high level of interest in the proposal and requests from multiple stakeholders for more time to evaluate the proposed rule”.
The definition of ‘insurance company’, under the proposed rule, would mean a company that has as its primary business the underwriting of insurance for nonaffiliated persons.
This would continue to include traditional insurance companies but not captive insurers. As a result, existing membership of captive insurers would be ‘sunset’ over five years with defined limits on advances.
