The Senate is expected to approve this week the most significant reversal of regulatory requirements for financial services firms since the financial crisis, including a significant retrenchment of the heightened scrutiny for banks with less than $250 billion in assets that was implemented by the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.

The bill, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act introduced by Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has 25 co-sponsors, including 12 Democrats. It raises the threshold to $250 billion in assets from the current $50 billion for when some of the largest banks face stricter oversight, including the designation as systemically important financial institutions. Crapo’s bill would also give regulators more discretion in when to require stress tests of capital adequacy for banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets in the event of another crisis…

…Paul Atkins, chief executive of Patomak Global Partners, LLC, a firm that advises financial services firms on regulatory issues and who led President Donald Trump’s transition team for independent financial regulatory agencies, told an audience of international bankers at a conference in Washington on Monday that rather than what was being characterized by critics and in the press as a wholesale upheaval of Dodd-Frank regulation, the proposal was a “refinement” of an “absurdly low threshold” for bank regulatory scrutiny.

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