Brendan Pedersen

The letter from House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters and Rep. Al Green points to laws passed by some state and local legislatures where financial institutions have been required to disclose whether they had ever profited from slavery in order to operate in their jurisdiction.

The Ohio Democrat and chair of the Senate Banking Committee acknowledged banks’ existing privacy obligations under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act but argued that the 1999 law did not go far enough to address the privacy landscape of 2022.

A report from the Roosevelt Institute published Monday urges Biden’s bank regulators to address climate risks through supervisory guidance, a move unlikely to garner support from banks. 

In a letter Tuesday to CEO Charlie Scharf, Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown pointed to recent media reports and said he expected Wells Fargo to develop a plan addressing “weaknesses that have plagued the bank for almost a decade.”

The Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act would take the uncertainty out of banking and payments transactions involving legal cannabis businesses. The bill has languished in the Senate for years, but there's optimism it could finally reach the president's desk. Here are four ways that could happen.

A bipartisan group of senators is calling for a bill allowing banks to serve the legal cannabis industry to be included in the U.S.-China trade bill, ending a yearslong blockade of the popular legislation.

The Michigan State University economist endured a grueling political fight over her nomination and secured a party-line vote in her favor on Tuesday night. 

A bipartisan group of senators Tuesday urged the Treasury Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to speed up implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act. It's only the latest of several efforts by lawmakers urging regulators to move faster since Fincen missed the statutory implementation deadline in January.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pointed to a recent implosion of the experimental TerraUSD stablecoin — which uses an algorithm rather than fiat currency pegging to maintain its value — as the latest evidence for urgently needed regulation in the sector.

The rule, which runs well over 500 pages, is expected to meet resistance from bankers worried about the regulatory burden of calculating the carbon emissions from their borrowers.

Lenders argue that they're taking steps to eliminate or rein in the consumer fees, but several Democratic senators say reform legislation could be a necessary step in the near future.

Democrats face the brunt of this year’s tough elections among the key financial committees in Congress, but Republicans are retiring in greater numbers.

The move from Republican senators mirrors an effort launched in the House, where Citibank also provides credit cards for congressional business. Republicans will be unable to enact such changes unless they take either chamber in upcoming elections.

Acting Director Himamauli Das acknowledged concerns from Democratic lawmakers that Fincen was moving too slowly to implement beneficial ownership rules but said the agency "will likely continue to do so, because our budget situation has required us to make significant trade-offs among competing priorities.”

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bob Menendez say the banks that own the payments system "have chosen to let consumers suffer" from unchecked fraud problems.

The industry is preparing for a grueling federal rulemaking process to implement the Corporate Transparency Act, which was intended to streamline anti-money-laundering compliance. Analysts say the devil will be in the regulation’s myriad details.

Observers say that while Michael Barr may not be progressives' first choice to be the Fed's top regulator, he has gained their support given the importance of the post and the pressure of looming midterm elections. What his exact policy prescriptions and priorities in the post-Dodd-Frank world will be, however, is unclear.

More than a year into his administration, President Biden has either vacancies or acting heads of each of the bank regulatory agencies. That may not be ideal, but the White House doesn't seem to be eager to put forth permanent replacements.

In a letter obtained by American Banker, the Senate Banking Committee chair called on the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to reform their bank merger review processes.