The New York State Department of Financial Services has published an order to relieve firms of the burden of having to obey some statutory and administrative regulatory requirements because the Coronavirus infestation is hampering them in their efforts to comply.

The lets New York’s financial institutions conduct meetings virtually and extends the timing requirement for annual meetings of stockholders. Most regulated firms have become reliant on teleworking and virtual meetings.

During the plague-related emergency and for 60 days thereafter, financial institutions chartered in New York may conduct meetings virtually by conference call, video conference or similar, as long as all concerned can hear each other at the same time.

The NYDFS has also extended the timing requirement for annual stockholder meetings that applies to certain institutions. Rather than a meeting having to be held within 4 months of the beginning of an institutions’ fiscal year-end, the institution is now to have 7 months if the prior deadline for the stockholder meeting occurs during the state of emergency.

These concessions to the mayhem that the virus is causing are tiny and the regulator more or less admits this by reassuring firms that it "will continue to consider regulatory relief, as appropriate and needed, for regulated institutions impacted by Covid-19."

The duration of the order is open-ended.  

So far this month, the ravages of the epidemic have not inhibited the NYSFS from fining the Industrial Bank of Korea US$35 million for breaking New York State's anti-money-laundering and recordkeeping laws, forcing Athene Holding Ltd to pay a civil fine of $45 million To New York State for doing some unlicensed pension risk transfer business (the first settlement to flow from an investigation of life insurers taking over corporate pension plans) and forcing three rife Insurance Companies to hand over more than $1 million to consumers because they allegedly broke some "Deferred to Immediate Annuity Replacement" rules.