Law and regulation

While standards for issuing government-backed loans have clearly tightened for borrowers with spotty credit, bankers report the criteria for someone with a good credit score mirrors standards used before the crisis.

Bureau’s first issue of “Supervisory Highlights” identifies issues with credit limits and inadequate mortgage disclosures as some of the violations found in first year of exams carried out by the new agency.

Federal bank regulators gave their examiners new guidelines Wednesday for supervising technology service providers.

MasterCard posted a third-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates as U.S. consumer spending increased.

Barclays posted a 29% gain in third-quarter pretax profit and said it was the target of two more regulatory investigations.

After more than a year of planning and regulatory scrutiny, a United Kingdom mobile commerce joint venture called Project Oscar isn’t quite ready to call itself a mobile wallet or payments service.

Ally Financial said Wednesday that it has repaid $2.9 billion of debt issued under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program.

Bubble-era claims about the various ways that owning a house could make you and your children happier are coming back to life.

Parkmobile USA, a company that accepts mobile payments for parking charges, is facing a backlash after blaming its fee increase on a recent cap to debit card interchange rates.

Why are there so few women at the top ranks of large banks? One factor: they lose hope. That needs to change, editor-at-large Barbara Rehm says.

Press releases continue to repeat Treasury's nonsensical claims about the "profit" the program has produced for taxpayers. But it remains to be seen whether not letting banks go out of business actually benefited anyone.

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act cases are projected to finish more than 1,500 behind last year's pace, according to data from U.S. district courts. Not so for other key consumer statutes.

To guess what might happen once unlimited deposit insurance ends, look at how corporations have handled their cash lately.

Bitcoin and other virtual currencies can contribute positively to financial innovation but also subject users to various risks, according to a report published recently by the European Central Bank.

As it implements Dodd-Frank regime for resolving systemically important firms, the FDIC must ensure creditors receive at least as much as they would in a Chapter 7 proceeding.

They say including such data would allow independent monitor Joseph Smith to test if servicers are providing adequate relief in low-income communities, but Smith's hands may be tied by the language of the settlement agreement.

"So what does designating some institutions as SIFIs mean for small businesses?" writes Forbes contributor Ryan Caldbeck. "While we don’t know the whole story yet, the answer, to date, appears to be very little."

Eight of the more than two dozen countries involved have adopted a package of capital and liquidity rules known as Basel III, according to the latest progress report by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

Banking powers, specifically the power to accept demand deposits, should be limited by Congress to institutions qualifying for federal deposit insurance. Otherwise we face uncontrolled systemic risk from inconsistently regulated entities.

The Center for Responsible Lending said the companies settle only a fraction of the debts they set out to settle.