Mid-market law firm Dykema has hired an attorney with broad experience as an advisor to financial institutions struggling to adapt to new regulatory frameworks.
Elizabeth Khalil is now a partner in Dykema’s Washington office. Khalil comes to the firm from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, where she served as an acting special assistant to Mark Pearce, director of the agency’s Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection. At an earlier stage of her career, Khalil was a senior associate at global law firm Hogan Lovells. Khalil has developed expertise in numerous areas of banking compliance, particularly with respect to deposit rules under the Dodd-Frank Act.
In a discussion with IFLR1000, Khalil recalled giving frequent attention to community banks during her time at the FDIC. One challenge such banks often face is limited resources, she said.
“Compared to the larger, more complex financial institutions, the community banks often don’t have as many in-house resources to address the variety of laws, regulations, policies, and risk areas they need to address. They have to rely on third-party partners, outside counsel, and so forth to ensure that their compliance requirements are met, that all risks are properly addressed,” Khalil stated.
In the past few years, banks of all sizes have had to adapt to new requirements pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act. No bank can afford to ignore the issue, regardless of whether regulators might classify it as a systemically important financial institution, or SIFI.
“Smaller banks might feel the issue particularly acutely, because of the smaller resource pool that they often have to draw on. The largest and most complex financial institutions have particular issues to deal with as well, whether it's figuring out what SIFI supervision could mean for them or implementing Basel capital standards. Obviously we’re not at the end of the story; there's a lot that is still unfolding, for all types of institutions,” Khalil stated.
Over the course of her career, Khalil has worked on a range of issues affecting not only financial institutions of varying sizes, but nonbank entities as well.
“I started my career at the OCC, which supervises many of the largest banks in the world. The FDIC has a particular focus on community banking as the primary federal regulator of so many of the nation’s smaller banks. Over the years, I've seen how the industry has changed, as well as how regulation and supervision has changed. And it's all still changing,” Khalil continued.
Khalil holds a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.S. from Georgetown University.