Jelena McWilliams

In December 2021, McWilliams announced her resignation, effective February 4, 2022, from the FDIC. Following the election of President Joe Biden, Democrats controlled all the seats on the FDIC except for the one she held. She resigned after expressing her frustrations in an essay published in the Wall Street Journal with what she called the erosion of agency norms at the FDIC and a "hostile takeover" by the other directors. Part of her resignation letter stated, "Of the 20 chairmen who preceded me at the FDIC, nine faced a majority of the board members from the opposing party, including Mr. Gruenberg as chairman under President Trump until I replaced him as chairman in 2018. Never before has a majority of the board attempted to circumvent the chairman to pursue their own agenda."

McWilliams served as executive vice president, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary for Fifth Third from January 2017 until May 2018.

On November 30, 2017, the White House press secretary issued a release announcing the President's intention to nominate McWilliams to serve as chairperson of the FDIC. McWilliams had been under consideration for the appointment since July 2017, when James Clinger withdrew his nomination for the position.

By year-end 2017, Fifth Third determined that if McWilliams were confirmed as FDIC head, it would not move to have her return the $300,000 signing bonus the bank had paid her when she joined its staff.

McWilliams worked in the United States Senate for six years, first as assistant chief counsel for the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee and then as chief counsel and deputy staff director for the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. At the banking committee, McWilliams worked with chairpersons Senator Richard Shelby (R, Alabama) and Senator Mike Crapo (R, Idaho) on, among other issues, the implementation of and efforts to rework or repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking-regulation reform act.

From 2007 to 2010, McWilliams worked as a lawyer at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she focused on a proposal for rules meant to make it easier for consumers to dispute mistakes on their credit reports and to understand their mortgages.

In that context, the article referenced Dodd-Frank, The Volcker Rule, the Community Reinvestment Act, small-dollar loans ("Trump officials have said they want to encourage banks to offer loan products that compete" with payday lenders), new banks (from 237 new banks approved by the FDIC in 2005, two were approved in 2016 and seven in 2017; "McWilliams has said she wants to speed up new-bank approvals"), fintech, leveraged lending (loans to heavily in debted companies), cybersecurity ("McWilliams cited cybersecurity as one of her priorities during her Senate testimony"), and capital, liquidity and overall and supplementary leverage rules.

Jelena McWilliams (née Obrenić; born July 29, 1973) is a Serbian-American business executive and a former Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. She was nominated to the position and to the FDIC Board of Directors by President Donald Trump, and the Senate confirmed her appointment on May 24, 2018. She was sworn in as Chairman on June 5, 2018. Previously, McWilliams was executive vice president and chief legal officer of Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, Ohio. She resigned from her position as Chairman of the Board of the FDIC on February 4, 2022.