Fed, FDIC officials to testify before Congress on bank failures

Ting Shen/Bloomberg

Representatives from the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are set to testify before Congress later this month at a hearing about the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg and Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr are scheduled to attend the March 29 hearing as witnesses and answer questions about the banks' collapses. 

The bipartisan hearing is expected to be the first of multiple hearings on the issue, according to House Financial Service Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and California Rep. Maxine Waters, the committee's top Democrat.

"This hearing will allow us to begin to get to the bottom of why these banks failed," McHenry and Waters said Friday in a joint statement.

Additional witnesses may be added as the hearing date approaches, McHenry and Waters said.

The Federal Reserve and FDIC did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday afternoon.

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The Fed said Monday that Barr will lead a review of Silicon Valley's failure. The findings of that report are expected to be publicly available by May 1, the agency said.

The Senate Banking Committee has yet to schedule a hearing into the matter. Chairman Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, this week urged regulators to review the circumstances around the failures of both Silicon Valley and Signature.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen became the first high-level administration official to testify before Congress after the failures set off a maelstrom across the banking industry. Yellen defended the federal government's decision to step in and provide systemic-risk exceptions to both Silicon Valley and Signature, and maintained that not all deposits at other banks are guaranteed.