Company: ASB
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000007789-25-000013
Chunk: 156

Company: ASSOCIATED BANC-CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 156
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 or adopted requirements to constrain consideration by companies and financial institutions of various environmental and social factors, including certain climate-related considerations.

The Corporation has established an Environmental Risk Management Policy and Program ("Program") Statement focused on environmental risk management; our environmental focus on efficient energy and resource use; and the environmental sustainability transition which will serve as the foundation to Associated's Environmental Sustainability Risk Management Program, a program for supporting environmental sustainability risk reporting. The Program is intended to help manage environmental and climate risk in a comprehensive, systematic, planned and documented manner, and to help policy practices integrate into the Corporation's Enterprise Risk Management program and align them with business objectives and any applicable laws. Oversight for climate-related risks includes Board-level, senior management and Board and management committee oversight.

Digital Asset Regulation

In recent years, the federal banking agencies have expressed increased concerns regarding the engagement by banking organizations in certain digital assets activities and issued a series of guidance materials addressing digital asset-related risks. For example, in 2021, the OCC issued an interpretive letter generally clarifying that certain digital assets activities of national banks are permissible subject to safety-and-soundness standards and the OCC’s prior approval. Similarly, in 2022, the Federal Reserve released a supervisory guidance requiring all banking organizations supervised by the agency to notify the Federal Reserve prior to engaging in any digital asset-related activity. The Federal Reserve’s guidance also reiterates that all digital asset-related activities must be legally permissible under applicable law and satisfy the relevant safety-and-soundness, risk management and internal controls requirements. In 2023, the federal banking agencies, including the OCC and the FDIC, issued guidance in the form of a joint statement to address, among other things, various risks resulting from the digital asset sector, risks stemming from the crypto-asset market vulnerabilities, deposit concentration and liquidity risk, and effective risk management and internal controls. Most recently, in August 2023, the Federal Reserve announced the establishment of a Novel Activities Supervision Program, which is designed in part to enhance the Federal Reserve’s supervision processes in respect of banking organizations’ crypto-asset related activities and use of distributed ledger technologies and other novel technologies in the delivery of financial products and services. 

Although the federal banking agencies have not developed formal regulations governing the digital asset activities of banking organizations, the supervisory framework summarized above currently dictates that, in order to effectively identify and manage digital asset-related risks and obtain supervisory non-objection to the proposed engagement in digital asset activities, banking organizations must implement appropriate risk management practices, including with respect