Reserve Administration – National Business Continuity Information

Overview – Disruption to Reserve Administration

Reserve Administration is responsible for ensuring that depository institutions meet their reserve requirements, as defined by Regulation D (Reserve Requirements of Depository Institutions), which is issued by the Federal Reserve Board. The regulation defines the type of institutions subject to reserve requirements, the reporting of deposits, the calculation of reserve requirements, and the maintenance of required reserves. Reserve requirements affect the volume of reserves held by depository institutions and represent an important tool in the implementation of U.S. monetary policy. Precise administration of reserve requirements helps ensure the accuracy of the Federal Reserve’s projections and long range control over money stock growth.

The Federal Reserve provides a number of ways to access reserves information. Besides the routine delivery of Requirement, Position and Applied As-of Adjustments reports via mail and FedMail®, depository institutions use ReserveCalc and the FedLine® access solution, which offer more timely data and a means to estimate required balances.

Preparing for a Federal Reserve Business Disruption

It is important to identify and prepare key personnel (including backups) in your organization who can ensure that any reserve and/or clearing balance requirements are met during an outage. The primary contact information that we have for each institution typically coincides with the addressee stated on Requirement, Position and Applied As-of Adjustments reports sent to you throughout the year. Should you wish a specific person to be your contingency contact person, please send an e-mail informing us of the person's name, telephone number and e-mail address, or provide this information to your regular contact provided in the Federal Reserve Reporting and Reserves Business Continuity Contacts section.

During a Reserve Administration Business Disruption - What to Expect

A Federal Reserve disruption may cause ReserveCalc, FedLine or FedMail to be inaccessible or the information obtained via these applications may be inaccurate. However, the Federal Reserve Bank has developed an extensive back-up and recovery process that should allow operations to resume within a relatively short period of time (within 24 hours or less).

During a Reserve Administration Business Disruption - What You Should Do

During the event:

If ReserveCalc, FedLine or FedMail is unavailable, depository institutions may use the contact numbers provided in the Federal Reserve Reporting and Reserves Business Continuity Contacts section for assistance with reserve maintenance. Unless noted, these continuity numbers remain valid even though Federal Reserve staff has relocated to a contingency site. Depository institutions are obligated to meet any reserve and clearing balance requirements over the length of a maintenance period even if reserves information is not available. Because of the nature of reserves, outages become more critical toward the end of a maintenance period. On the other hand, outages occurring early in a maintenance period may not require significant intervention since depository institutions may have adequate time to satisfy any required balances.

After the event:

If a depository institution's ability to maintain required balances is impaired as the result of a Federal Reserve System outage, each Federal Reserve Bank will review each situation on a case-by-case basis and will determine if as-of adjustments are warranted.

Additional Information

Refer to the Federal Reserve Statistical and Structure Reporting Business Continuity section for additional information or contact your Federal Reserve Reporting and Reserves Business Continuity Contact.

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