---
title: "Dodd-Frank Act: definition, formula, and thresholds"
description: "The Dodd-Frank Act, formally the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Public Law 111-203, July 2010), is the comprehensive financial reform law passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis. It restructured US financial regulation, created the CFPB and Financial Stability Oversight Council, and instituted enhanced prudential standards for the largest banks."
canonical_url: https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/dodd-frank-act/
source: BankRegReports
category: "Supervision & Ratings"
schedule: "Implemented across multiple agency rule sets"
---

# Dodd-Frank Act

> The Dodd-Frank Act, formally the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Public Law 111-203, July 2010), is the comprehensive financial reform law passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis. It restructured US financial regulation, created the CFPB and Financial Stability Oversight Council, and instituted enhanced prudential standards for the largest banks.

## Formula

```
Public Law 111-203, 848 pages, hundreds of implementing regulations.
```

Dodd-Frank is not a single rule but a framework. Major components: Title I (systemic-risk regulation, FSOC), Title II (orderly liquidation authority), Title VI (Volcker Rule), Title VII (OTC derivatives reform), Title VIII (financial market utility regulation), Title X (CFPB), Title XIV (mortgage reform: qualified mortgages, ATR), and many others.

## Why it matters

Dodd-Frank is the most significant US financial law since the 1930s. It created the modern bank supervisory framework: enhanced capital and liquidity rules for large banks, the CCAR/DFAST stress test architecture, living wills for resolution planning, the Volcker Rule, and the CFPB. The 2018 EGRRCPA amendments substantially raised thresholds for several Dodd-Frank requirements. President Obama signed the Act on July 21, 2010; its long title describes it as an act to promote financial stability by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system. Title X created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, the CFPB's statutory name, and the Volcker Rule in Title VI limits banks' proprietary trading and their investments in hedge funds and private equity funds.

## How to read it

Dodd-Frank's bank-supervisory impact varies dramatically by bank size. G-SIBs face the full set of enhanced prudential standards (SLR, LCR, NSFR, CCAR, living wills, TLAC). Banks $100-700B face a calibrated subset. Banks under $100B face limited enhanced standards. Most community-bank compliance burden comes from the mortgage-reform provisions and CFPB rules.

## Thresholds

| Range | Reading | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| G-SIB | Full framework | All enhanced prudential standards. |
| $100–$700B | Tiered framework | Calibrated set per 2019 tailoring rules. |
| $10–$100B | Limited framework | Selected enhanced standards. |
| < $10B | Minimal direct impact | Mostly mortgage and consumer rules. |


## Worked example

A community bank with $4B in assets faces virtually no Dodd-Frank enhanced prudential standards. Its compliance burden focuses on Qualified Mortgage / Ability-to-Repay rules under Title XIV, CFPB consumer rules under Title X, and it is exempt from the Volcker Rule under EGRRCPA section 203, which covers banks with $10B or less in assets and trading assets and liabilities of 5% or less of total assets. By contrast, JPMorgan Chase complies with every Title VI, VII, VIII, and Title I provision.

## Questions

### Did the 2018 EGRRCPA repeal Dodd-Frank?

No. EGRRCPA amended Dodd-Frank: raising the $50B threshold for enhanced prudential standards to $250B (with discretionary application $100-250B), exempting smaller banks from several reporting and stress-test requirements, and recalibrating other rules. The core architecture of Dodd-Frank remains.

### What is the Volcker Rule?

Section 619 of Dodd-Frank, prohibiting US banks from proprietary trading and limiting investments in private equity and hedge funds. It took effect in 2014 with substantial complexity in defining market-making and hedging exceptions. 2019 simplification reduced the rule's compliance burden.

### Why did Dodd-Frank create the CFPB?

Title X created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to consolidate consumer-protection authority previously distributed across multiple agencies. The CFPB has authority over banks and most non-bank consumer financial services providers. Its rule-making and supervisory role significantly expanded the consumer-compliance burden for affected institutions.

## Sources

- Public Law 111-203 (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act)
- Public Law 115-174 (Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, 2018)

## Related metrics

- [Consent Order](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/consent-order/): A Consent Order is a formal public enforcement action where a bank agrees to specified corrective actions without admitting or denying alleged violations. Consent orders are the most common form of formal bank supervisory action.
- [Cease and Desist Order](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/cease-and-desist-order/): A Cease and Desist Order is a formal supervisory action directing a bank to stop unsafe or unsound practices or violations of law. C&D orders may be contested or issued as consent orders; both carry the same legal force.
- [Civil Money Penalty](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/civil-money-penalty/): A Civil Money Penalty (CMP) is a monetary fine imposed by a bank regulator for violations of law, regulation, or supervisory agreement. CMPs can range from thousands to billions of dollars depending on the violation.
- [Stress Capital Buffer](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/stress-capital-buffer/): The Stress Capital Buffer (SCB) is a bank-specific CET1 buffer derived from the Federal Reserve's annual stress test. It replaces the static 2.5% capital conservation buffer for the largest banks and floors at 2.5%.

## About this document

This is the markdown twin of the page named in `canonical_url` above. Source filings are public record; the cleaning, normalization, cross-source linkage, and derived metrics are BankRegReports' own. Attribute with a link to the canonical URL.

Markdown twins are published for editorial content only. Institution data pages do not have them. For data at scale use the API, which is documented at https://www.bankregreports.com/api/ and specified at https://www.bankregreports.com/openapi.json. It returns typed JSON with explicit units and periods, and one call replaces hundreds of page fetches.


## Sitemap

- [Glossary](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/): every metric, with formula and thresholds
- [Blog](https://www.bankregreports.com/blog/): analysis and explainers
- [API documentation](https://www.bankregreports.com/api/): the programmatic way to get this data
- [XML sitemap](https://www.bankregreports.com/sitemap.xml): the complete crawlable index