FDIC chair Gruenberg to resign following report on toxic workplace culture

“In light of recent events, I am prepared to step down from my responsibilities once a successor is confirmed,” Gruenberg said in a statement released Monday by the FDIC. “Until that time, I will continue to fulfill my responsibilities as chairman of the FDIC, including the transformation of the FDIC’s workplace culture.”

The third-party independent review concluded, based on complaints from more than 500 individuals, that “for far too many employees and for far too long, the FDIC has failed to provide a workplace safe from sexual harassment, discrimination, and other interpersonal misconduct.” The report also found the agency’s “patriarchal, insular, and risk-averse culture has contributed to the conditions that allowed for this workplace misconduct to occur and persist.”

The investigation found employees reporting misconduct feared retaliation and there was an overall lack of credibility among employees regarding the FDIC’s internal reporting channels.

Gruenberg, who has been a member of the FDIC board since 2005 and chair since 2023, previously apologized to FDIC employees for the “feelings of fear, anger, and sadness” they experienced not just from workplace abuse but from the agency’s lack of response to their complaints.

In that apology, Gruenberg announced an action plan for addressing the report’s concerns, which included items already in place and a timeline for those still in process.

The action plan includes establishing a 24-hour reporting hotline, reviewing compensation practices for discrimination, creating consequences for harassers that includes financial penalties, conducting a risk assessment for the FDIC on assessing penalties on harassers, establishing a system that tracks employees who are serial harassers, creating new policies and procedures for how to handle harassment complaints, and ordering training on sexual harassment for all employees.