The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. unveiled a new tool Nov. 8 to streamline the pre-exam process and stop federal regulators from requesting data irrelevant to community banks, American Banker reported.

The Electronic Pre-Exam Package, known as ePrep, will go into general use by early 2013 and will customize data requests to fit banks' specific circumstances rather than just requesting massive amounts of potentially irrelevant information.

“The tool is built with a community bank focus in mind,” Kristie Elmquist, FDIC Dallas regional director, told American Banker. “It utilizes filters to ensure that the request is tailored to the institution.”

The new tool has been piloted in exams for 30 banks under FDIC’s supervision. It allows bank examiners to seek pre-exam information that specifies the type of exam, the types of bylaws the bank has, executive committee minutes, loan and liquidity information and other bank characteristics that can help regulators craft requests reflective of a bank’s true structure.