Now in its fourth year, the bank stress-testing process prescribed by the Dodd-Frank Act continues to evolve. Data and reporting templates have been standardized along with the Federal Reserve’s process for creating economic scenarios. Banks have invested millions of dollars to upgrade their IT systems and beef up their risk oversight and modeling teams. As evidenced by the Fed’s 2014 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review report, most banks are now flush with capital as a result of shedding noncore assets and maintaining tight lending standards over the past four years. Now that bank finances and risk management are stronger and data are more reliable, we focus on the quantitative accuracy of the stress tests themselves and their reasonableness vis-à-vis the Great Recession experience......
