BankThink

Continued regulatory gaps in overdraft service put consumers at financial risk and potentially expose them to high, unexpected costs for little benefit.

It's the big events that get chronicled. A branch opening. A new headquarters. A merger.

My wife and I were blessed with six children. The youngest is a senior in high school and two are in college. We received an advertisement from Bluebird for prepaid debit cards for college students. That led to questions in my mind about my credit union's debit cards and prepaid cards.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau penalized two nonbank mortgage lenders, Mortgage Master and Washington Federal, for failure to properly comply with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975.

A law intended to make the National Flood Insurance Program sustainable could force many owners out of their homes and hurt the housing recovery.

Breaking News This Morning ...Earnings Season Kicks Off: JPMorgan and Wells Fargo reported third-quarter results this morning. A big theme this earnings season, according to the Journal's "Ahead of the Tape" column, will be the upward trajectory of long-term interest rates. That trend's bad for post-crisis profit boosters like mortgage refinancing and fixed-income trading, but generally positive in the long term for, you know, core banking.

A lesson for Congress in liquidity risk and market contagion.

Proposals for a supplemental leverage ratio would treat cash, and the safest cash-like assets, like any risky asset. This may discourage banks from keeping their current high levels of liquidity.

Ten large U.S. and European banks are using software from Digital Reasoning to uncover employees' corrupt activities.