Brendan Pedersen

With Congress pouring billions into a new grant program and state-based lending initiatives, community development financial institutions say they can move past survival mode to test new products and partner with larger financial institutions.

In a speech, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Jelena McWilliams zeroed in on the potential for outdated technology to impede the banking industry and even threaten the sector’s resilience.

As Fincen implements an anti-money-laundering law requiring businesses to add their beneficial owners to a new database, bankers worry they'll still be on the hook to provide that information on behalf of customers for some time.

The agency has stepped up efforts to encourage those lacking banking relationships to choose an affordable account option for their pandemic relief funds. It will have to overcome distrust of financial institutions in communities of color.

The agency first sought feedback in February 2020 on how it could update its logo, but the process was suspended two months later amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department of Justice in the Trump administration hatched a plan to consider reforming its bank-merger review process, raising industry hopes about overhauling the outdated regime. But progressives want the agency to give more thought to the harm bank combinations cause consumers, including further branch closings.

Regulators are likely to scrap the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s divisive rule and instead pursue an interagency framework. But stakeholders commenting on a Federal Reserve draft plan say several aspects of the OCC regulation are worth keeping.

Mehrsa Baradaran, a University of California, Irvine, professor and former banking lawyer, has worked hard to close the racial wealth gap and could further such goals as head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, wrote 34 caucus members in a letter to President Biden.

Former Obama-era regulators Kara Stein and Sarah Bloom Raskin, as well as Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, have joined the field of potential nominees to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to sources familiar with the process.

The agency's plan would strengthen requirements that banks use a minimum amount of their real estate for the business of banking, but three grade groups say banks need flexibility in the pandemic to manage occupancy.