BankThink

A majority of BankThink posts dedicated to risk assessment focus on tools, systems, agencies or legislation. Rarely do we talk about the people hired to implement them. Do you believe in risk managers?

Concerns about moral hazard should not prevent Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from helping underwater homeowners avoid foreclosure.

"I'm suddenly liking being a regional bank," said KeyCorp CEO Beth Mooney. Dodd-Frank "has created a different playing field," one in which she believes regionals may fare better than larger or smaller banks.

In a society where blatant expressions of discrimination are largely considered to be unacceptable, discrimination often takes on subtler and more insidious forms.

A Congressional investigation found HSBC engaged in money laundering and sanctions busting for ten years, in multibillion-dollar amounts. Perhaps not coincidentally, the bank has been disinvesting from the U.S. Let's invite them to complete their departure—fast.

Vermont may rank 49th in population, but lately the Green Mountain State has a new contender for the No. 1 slot when it comes to native production: Odd News out of Credit Unions.

The recent decision by the State of Vermont Department of Financial Regulation ordering the Vermont State Employees Credit Union to stop using words such as "bank" and "banking" in its marketing, communications and advertising begs the question, are you really serious?

Are you thinking RAP is for a different, younger generation? In the world of music, you might be right, but in the world of marketing, it's always No. 1 on the charts. RAP is an acronym for Retention, Acquisition, Prospect.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...Happy Birthday, Dear SOX: Remember that big financial law that came between the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Dodd-Frank Act? Policymakers and pundits have spent so much time lately debating whether to roll back those two laws that we (I'll omit the auditing department from this blanket reference) have forgotten the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that was supposed to clean up auditing conflicts, public disclosures and do other things to renew our faith in public companies' financial reports. Yeah, right. Well, today is the 10th birthday of the law spurred by the Enron and WorldCom crises and named after the chairman of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees of the time, and the recollections are harsh.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have decided not to define loan participation agreements as swaps." writes Allison Bisbey of Leveraged Finance News.