Bringing Technology to State Bank Supervision

In an episode of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors’ (CSBS) State of the System podcast published late last year, CSBS President and CEO Brandon Milhorn argued that technology will be a “key enabler” for state bank supervisors in the US to keep up with the evolving financial sector.

Milhorn pointed to CSBS’s Catalyst Initiative, which it launched earlier in 2025, as one way it is pursuing that agenda across the state system. Catalyst is an extension of CSBS’s core mission to make supervision “more efficient, more effective, and more coordinated,” he explained, with technology serving “as the binding that makes all of that work more effectively.” This is especially important as financial institutions become larger and more complex, Milhorn said, requiring that supervisors “confront and analyze mounds and mounds of data.”

Milhorn highlighted the potential of technology to protect examiner time and focus supervisory resources. “I want my examiners to be examiners,” he said, rather than “chasing data” and “pulling paper.” He stressed that technology should allow supervisors to spend their limited time on what matters most: “identifying and managing risk in the system.”

Catalyst’s early work has been organized around two concrete workstreams. First, streamlining bank data reporting to make it less costly and more transparent. And second, piloting the use of the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) mortgage compliance dataset to expedite mortgage file reviews. 

In contrast to traditional government procurement processes, Catalyst begins by identifying shared supervisory “pain points” across the states. It then invites technology providers to propose solutions to resolve them. CSBS shortlists firms that are invited to demonstrate their tools directly to examiners, giving supervisors a practical way to assess what works before committing to a particular approach.