Starling today announced the launch of its new Deeper Dive report, “Supervisors on Supervision,” following a global stocktake that convened dozens of senior financial-sector supervisors, ranging from Canada to New Zealand. The study captures emerging views on reform efforts focused on culture risk governance and supervision.
Randal K. Quarles, former U.S. Federal Reserve Board Vice Chair for Supervision and past Chair of the Financial Stability Board, chaired the stocktake and led the report’s production. Chapter co-chairs included Wayne Byres, former Chair of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority; Elizabeth McCaul, a former Member of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank; Carolyn Rogers, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada; and Fernando Restoy, Chair of the Financial Stability Institute.
Since the Global Financial Crisis, conduct and prudential regulators alike have increasingly identified organizational culture as a root cause of misconduct and failures in risk governance control systems. Post-mortem reviews of the 2023 banking sector turmoil likewise concluded that supervisory culture contributed to oversight lapses, the failure of several U.S. regional banks, and the near-collapse of Credit Suisse, a global systemically important bank, or G-SIB.
Despite heightened concern about culture as a supervisory and policy issue, no global effort has yet defined core terms or established common frameworks or metrics to facilitate culture risk governance and supervision. The report “Supervisors on Supervision” sets the stage for doing so.
“This study offers a full account of the global stocktaking effort and summarizes its implications,” Quarles writes in his Opening Letter. “Under the guidance of a remarkable leadership and advisory team, it curated the views of dozens of senior figures worldwide. Their consensus is clear: culture must move from the margins of rhetoric to the center of credible supervision, and collaboration is essential if supervisory legitimacy is to be retained and efficacy is to be advanced.”
Quarles adds, “This report should be read as a call to action: we must modernize supervision. Doing so requires a shared understanding of culture risk governance and a commitment to define and delimit the problem.”
Starling Founder and CEO Stephen Scott emphasized the urgency of this work. “Our 2025 Compendium underscored the need to modernize culture risk governance and supervision,” he said. “The stocktake participants cited here argue with broad unanimity that this is central to institutional safety and soundness, economic competitiveness, and the restoration of supervisory legitimacy following the 2023 turmoil. We are honored to curate this crucial work, which outlines the collective action and public-private partnership required going forward. This initiative goes to our core mission: equipping leaders to preserve institutional integrity and to sustain public trust.”
The report is available for download at Starling Insights.
PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD
The report is released as a Public Exposure Draft to solicit broad industry feedback. Starling Insights will open the comment period at an event on December 15, 2025, in New York City. The comment period will extend through March 15, 2026, and will inform a Final Report to be published shortly thereafter.
Media and others seeking information about the Supervisors on Supervision stocktake may reach editor@starlingtrust.com.
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