The deregulatory agenda got a published schedule
The SEC's 2026 Unified Agenda landed in July: 38 planned rulemakings under Chairman Atkins, prioritising retail access to private markets, proxy modernisation, streamlined shelf registrations, and a comprehensive crypto framework. The direction isn't uniform, though. In the same month the SEC proposed making e-delivery the default for investor communications, its staff tightened activist disclosure expectations under Schedules 13D and 14A, down to synthetic equity and parallel voting agreements.
The Federal Reserve spent July on rules that have barely moved in decades. Regulation O's insider-lending thresholds would finally track economic growth instead of sitting frozen, and Regulation MM would give mutual holding companies their first genuinely new Tier 1 capital pathway in a generation, complete with standardised model term sheets.
The quietest entry deserves the closest reading. The FDIC, OCC, and NCUA issued joint supervisory guidance on lending to removable populations, turning May's executive order into something examiners will test underwriting files against. And the CFPB sent its revised Section 1033 open banking rule to OIRA, with the fee question now squarely on the table: if banks can charge for third-party API access, the economics of data aggregation change for everyone.
The pattern across the month is consistent: lighter rules on paper, more specific examiner expectations in practice.
Our July US Regulatory Horizon Scanning brief covers every development across banking, consumer credit, crypto, investments, payments, and cross-sector policy. Every entry ends with a "What this means" briefing that tells your team what to do about it, not just what happened.
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