Azher Abbasi, the head of bank supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco — which included oversight of the failed Silicon Valley Bank — will retire Oct. 31.
Abbasi, the executive vice president of the Supervision + Credit group, joined the San Francisco Fed in 2015.
Bloomberg News first reported the news Monday, and the San Francisco Fed confirmed his retirement, adding that Niel Willardson, formerly with the Minneapolis Fed, will take over the role on an interim basis starting Oct. 1.
Abbasi and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly came under fire earlier this year after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which caused a crisis in the U.S. banking system, with critics saying the Fed missed warning signs. The crisis also led to the failure of San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, which was then acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
An internal Fed report on SVB’s collapse called it a “textbook case of mismanagement by the bank,” and Daly said in an interview in July that she was purposely not involved in the day-to-day supervision of banks in her district.