On December 31, 2022, Charles G. Cooper, commissioner of the Texas Department of Banking, completed his third consecutive two-year term serving on the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC). The CSBS has appointed Adrienne A. Harris, superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, to succeed Cooper.

Title I of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act created the FSOC to monitor the safety and stability of the nation’s financial system, identify risks to the system and coordinate responses to any threat. The Dodd-Frank Act requires one of the five non-voting members of the FSOC be a state banking supervisor, to be selected by state banking supervisors. State supervisors voted this past September for Harris to assume the role beginning January 1, 2023.

Cooper began his first term as FSOC state banking representative in September 2018 and was twice reappointed by his colleagues. He represented state banking regulators’ perspectives on several important issues, including climate-related financial risk and state-federal pandemic coordination. Most recently, Cooper was influential in ensuring that the FSOC’s recommendations on digital assets considered state banking regulators and adequately reflected state laws and regulations

Cooper’s career in the banking industry spans more than 50 years, beginning as an examiner with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and transitioning into the private sector, serving as a banking executive, board member, educator and professional consultant to the industry. In 2008, he was appointed Texas Banking commissioner. Cooper is chair emeritus of the CSBS board of directors. He also serves as the state representative on the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee (FBIIC) and is heavily involved in promoting cybersecurity efforts in the financial sector.

As Texas banking commissioner, Cooper’s responsibilities include the chartering, regulation, supervision and examination of 213 Texas state-chartered banks (as of September 30, 2022), with aggregate assets of approximately $419.8 billion. The department also supervises money-service businesses, among other areas. A native Texan, Cooper holds a BBA degree in finance and economics from Baylor University.

“We thank Commissioner Cooper for his service. He has been a model for cooperative federalism, reminding both state and federal regulators that we have much to learn from one another and will best succeed when acting together,” says James M. Cooper, CSBS president and CEO. “Superintendent Harris’ background and experience at both the federal and state level will be an asset for the council as it manages emerging risk during a time of economic uncertainty. I am confident that our nation’s financial system will be well served by this appointment.”

Harris joined the Obama Administration in 2013 as senior advisor in the U.S. Treasury Department before being appointed special assistant to the president for economic policy as part of the White House National Economic Council. In this role, she managed the financial services portfolio, focusing on the implementation of Dodd-Frank, and developed strategies for financial reform, consumer protections, cybersecurity and housing finance reform.

Harris was nominated to lead the New York State Department of Financial Services by Governor Kathy Hochul in August 2021 and confirmed by the New York State Senate on January 25, 2022. Prior to her nomination, she was an executive in the private sector and a professor and faculty co-director at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy’s Center on Finance, Law and Policy. She began her career as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.

“As the chartering authority and primary supervisor of an overwhelming majority of banks in the United States, state supervisors have a unique perspective into the emerging risks and threats to the stability of the financial system,” Harris says. “I am humbled and honored by the support of my fellow state bank regulators to represent their views on this important council.”