Some of the companies that failed under OTS supervision during the financial crisis of 2007–2010 include American International Group (AIG), Washington Mutual, and IndyMac.

[1] Other regulatory agencies like the OTS include the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve System, and the National Credit Union Administration.

On television, President George H. W. Bush said,[2] Never again will America allow any insured institution to operate normally if owners lack sufficient tangible capital to protect depositors and taxpayers alike.and "trashed" the predecessor Federal Home Loan Bank Board; soon thereafter, the sign was changed to the "Office of Thrift Supervision".

[10] The OTS "adopted an aggressively deregulatory stance toward the mortgage lenders it regulated... [and] allowed the reserves the banks held as a buffer against losses to dwindle to a historic low.

"[10] In March 2007, a Government Accountability Office report noted that "In contrast [to the Federal Reserve], a substantial minority of the firms OTS oversees—especially the large, complex ones—have primary businesses other than those traditionally engaged in by thrifts, such as insurance, securities, or commercial activities.

The end of the OTS prompted at least one thrift, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, to convert to a credit union rather than meet the "strict" insurance regulations set forth in the Dodd-Frank Act.

This resulted in OTS providing consolidated supervision for such well-known firms as General Electric (GE), AIG, Inc., Ameriprise Financial, American Express, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch.

[17] Reich blamed Indymac's 11 July 2008 failure on $1.3bn of withdrawals in the fortnight following concerns raised from Senator Chuck Schumer over the bank's solvency.

[21] Prior to IndyMac's failure on 11 July 2008, the bank had come to rely heavily on higher cost, less stable, brokered deposits, as well as secured borrowings, to fund its operations.

The bank had focused on stated income and other aggressively underwritten loans in areas with rapidly escalating home prices, particularly in California and Florida.

According to a source with knowledge of the incident, at another point Mr. Dochow limited the scope of a review by OTS regulators of IndyMac's portfolio of loans and other assets, overruling the advice of others in the agency.

Marla Freedman, the assistant inspector general for audit, detailed a pattern of excess risk-taking and abuse of the lending process at IndyMac and the OTS's consistent and concurrent failure to act.

[35] OTS regulation allowed France's Commission Bancaire [fr] to grant approval for a Paris-based banking subsidiary, Banque AIG.

[39] After a dispute with Goldman Sachs in 2007 over the value of the credit default swaps,[40] the OTS did not initiate formal enforcement action, but "periodically raised concerns with AIG managers".