Kate Berry has covered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for American Banker since 2016. She joined the publication in 2006 covering mortgage lending and the financial crisis. Berry also has covered big banks including Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. She has won five awards from the Society of American Business Writers and Editors, and has worked at several news organizations including the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Associated Press. Berry began her career as a clerk at the New York Times.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is ending remote work and ordering its entire staff to report to a new Washington, D.C., headquarters five days a week.
May 28 -
Housing advocates and compliance firms are suing to block a rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that they say guts the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
May 27 -
The Department of Justice said that Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions sought forgiveness from the Small Business Administration for a Paycheck Protection Program loan that the bank should have known did not qualify.
May 26 -
House lawmakers modified a ban on big-money investors from purchasing single-family homes, broadening the exemptions for build-to-rent properties and eliminating requirements in a Senate version of the bill that affected investors divest their holdings.
May 14 -
The Federal Housing Administration put an end to pandemic-era relief last year, triggering a 28% jump in foreclosures on FHA loans in the first quarter and an expected spike in defaults ahead.
May 13 -
The Treasury Department held a high-stakes huddle with state insurance officials to discuss risks associated with the rapid growth of private credit in the economy and whether those investments could pose systemic vulnerabilities.
May 7 -
Life insurers' borrowings from the Federal Home Loan banks has increased in recent years, raising concerns about opaque, private credit investments and how it intersects with the Federal Home Loan banks' housing mission.
May 7 -
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a new version of a small-business lending rule that took 17 years to get over the finish line. Banks are still lobbying for the rule to be repealed.
April 30 -
A federal judge harshly criticized the settlement of a civil suit between the Department of Justice and a Texas land developer.
April 30 -
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is poised to finalize a contentious rule mandating the collection of demographic data on small-business borrowers, with the aim of ensuring equal access to credit for women and minority owners.
April 27 -
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized changes to Regulation B, which implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, to eliminate any liability for indirect discrimination by lenders. The change represents a major shift in how the agency polices lending discrimination.
April 22 -
Banks are pushing back on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's draft of a five-year strategic plan, which includes a notable pullback from supervising nonbanks.
April 20 -
The Federal Savings Bank in Chicago got hit with a federal consent order after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that the bank blasted veterans with millions of deceptive ads.
April 16 -
A federal judge refused to sign a settlement agreement between the Department of Justice and Houston developer Colony Ridge because it failed to provide any consumer relief. DOJ agreed to an out-of-court settlement instead.
April 14 -
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has dismissed scores of enforcement attorneys early in President Donald Trump's second term, is staffing up its litigation arm in anticipation of defending its rules in court.
April 13 -
Jay Plum, head of consumer lending at Fifth Third Bank, says artificial intelligence is fundamentally shifting relationships between banks and their third-party software vendors, allowing banks to do things on their own that they would previously rely on vendors to do for them, like identify risky loans and prepare for exams.
April 9 -
Swiss banking giant UBS tried to get a federal court to reject new allegations that Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired in 2023, had concealed Nazi-linked assets.
April 7 -
A federal appeals court has agreed to rehear a challenge to a Colorado law intended to combat "rent-a-bank," arrangements that would impose Colorado's interest rate caps on certain out-of-state banks.
April 6 -
The Department of Justice is seeking court approval to immediately fire more than 600 employees, slashing the CFPB's workforce by 53%.
April 1 -
Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman said the Fed's proposed capital framework will inject up to $100 billion into the economy to support small-business loans.
April 1
