Fed Announces Annual Regulation D Adjustments

For Fed-watcher geeks only---others may pass.

The Federal Reserve Board has announced the annual indexing of the reserve requirement exemption amount and of the low reserve tranche for 2010. These amounts are used in the calculation of reserve requirements of depository institutions. The Board also announced the annual indexing of the nonexempt deposit cutoff level and the reduced reporting limit that will be used to determine deposit reporting panels effective 2010.

All depository institutions must hold a percentage of certain types of deposits as reserves in the form of vault cash, as a deposit in a Federal Reserve Bank, or as a deposit in a pass-through account at a correspondent institution. Reserve requirements currently are assessed on the depository institution's net transaction accounts (mostly checking accounts). Depository institutions must also regularly submit deposit reports of their deposits and other reservable liabilities.

For net transaction accounts in 2010, the first $10.7 million, up from $10.3 million in 2009, will be exempt from reserve requirements. A three percent reserve ratio will be assessed on net transaction accounts over $10.7 million up to and including $55.2 million, up from $44.4 million in 2009. A 10 percent reserve ratio will be assessed on net transaction accounts in excess of $55.2 million.

These annual adjustments, known as the low reserve tranche adjustment and the reserve requirement exemption amount adjustment, are based on growth in net transaction accounts and total reservable liabilities, respectively, at all depository institutions between June 30, 2008 and June 30, 2009.