It has been apparent for years that the common boilerplate Supervision and Regulation discussion in most bank holding company Form 10-K Annual Reports could be trimmed down and updated. Instead of rehashing longstanding banking laws and regulations, financial institutions should shed unnecessary text and instead emphasize those recent developments which are directly relevant to the company. This year’s 10-K season was no different. Old habits die hard and the culprit may more likely be disinterest in changing content or format for what has seemed ‘‘tried and true.’’

The following short paragraph and a bullet points list of key laws arguably would be sufficient to satisfy the SEC Reg S-K requirement that bank holding company 10-K filers describe any required government approval of principal products and services and the effect of existing or probable government regulations on their business...

Originally published in Accounting Policy and Practice Report on June 19, 2015.