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 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 Banks are still lobbying for the rule to be repealed.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 -
House Financial Services Chairman French Hill is pushing regulatory relief for banks, reforming the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and advocating a "whole-of-government" assault on fraud.
April 1 -
The nation's second-largest bank agreed to the massive settlement to avoid a looming trial in May over accusations that it enabled suspicious, multimillion-dollar transactions — including a staggering $170 million payment from the former Apollo CEO Leon Black — to Epstein.
March 30 -
A recent executive order encouraging changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Ability-To-Repay and Qualified Mortgage rules are adding to a packed agenda at a time when the agency has lost a third of its staff.
March 26 -
Swiss banking giant UBS Group received federal approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to convert its $1.6 trillion-asset UBS Bank USA from a Utah-chartered industrial bank to a national charter.
March 20 -
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and 10 former officials filed amicus briefs that provide legal heft to banks battling the state of Illinois over a law that removes sales taxes and tips from interchange fees.
March 18
