Dodd-Frank

Community and regional banks should be subjected to simpler rules than very large banks, the chairman and CEO of the Buffalo, N.Y., company said. In fact, size is the wrong determinant for risk-based regulation, he said.

All 31 firms that took this year's Dodd-Frank Act Stress Test had enough capital to withstand the Fed's hypothetical severe economic scenario, but several of the largest banks were teetering on the edge of the leverage and risk-based capital requirements.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans reintroduced several hot-button bills this week, helping to set the stage for some of the political fights to come later in the year.

Loan demand continues to increase across the country, even though some economic sectors are still struggling, according to a report released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Board.

Republicans are working to craft a Dodd-Frank regulatory relief bill this spring, but pushback on cost-benefit analysis mandates could derail the process.

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors wants Congress to adopt a formal community bank definition, based on qualitative factors such as local governance structure and business models.

The Financial Stability Board’s proposed capital and long-term debt requirements would only go part of the way toward ending the risk of government bailouts. If regulators really want to get rid of too big to fail, they need to deal with over-the-counter derivatives market.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray said a review of its "qualified mortgage" rule will allow enough time to consider changes if lawmakers fail to make progress on housing finance before a key deadline.

The paper by a consultant with the Office of Financial Research said that projected losses in the 2013 and 2014 tests were "nearly perfectly correlated," suggesting that the tests have become "less informative."

Though stress tests are widely viewed as a successful and critical exercise, there are growing concerns that regulators — and the banks themselves — may have become too reliant on them, overshadowing other aspects of the supervisory process.

International remittances grew at a number of banks last year, according to new data, but anti-money-laundering rules may make the fee-based business too expensive to keep.

Lawmakers reluctant to offer community banks regulatory relief should consider the empirical evidence of how Dodd-Frank has hurt small lenders — and listen to the federal and state bank regulators calling for changes.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including Dodd-Frank's impact on small institutions, Fed chair Janet Yellen's handling of attacks on her staff and Bitcoin's public but pseudonymous ledger.

The Fed's annual dissection of each of the 31 largest U.S. banks is a painstaking and enormously complicated endeavor. This is an inside look at how it works.

During Congressional testimony this week, Fed Chair Janet Yellen was sharply questioned about remarks made by Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez expressing mild concern about a provision of Dodd-Frank. Yellen didn't defend Alvarez — or note that his comments actually reflected the view of the board.

A court-imposed deadline for American Express to negotiate a fix to its merchant rules with the Department of Justice is about three weeks away. Odds of a deal are said to be low, heightening uncertainty — and fueling debate — about how the showdown will affect the future of the credit card business.

The Massachusetts senator recently argued that community banks have little need for regulatory relief. But a closer look at recent FDIC data shows that the health of small banks has taken a turn for the worse in the aftermath of Dodd-Frank.

Republican lawmakers said Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen's meetings with executive-branch officials and liberal groups undercut the Fed's claim that a congressional audit would harm its independence.

During an unusually aggressive bout of questioning for Yellen, particularly from a lawmaker generally regarded as supportive of the Fed chair, Warren questioned comments made by Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez last year raising concerns with aspects of the financial reform law.

It's not quite too big to fail, but Ocwen is the country's largest servicer of subprime mortgages. So if it were forced to sell itself, or even failed, the transfer of some $410 billion in servicing rights could create havoc in the mortgage market, industry experts said.