Law and regulation

A lack of liquidity wasn't what caused most of the largest U.S. banks to fail their living wills test, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. official said Thursday.

The Federal Reserve has announced the schedule for releasing the results of the 2016 stress tests of the largest U.S. banks.

The National Retail Federation wants the Federal Trade Commission to do more than merely check up on the companies that routinely assess merchants for compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposal could have included flexibility for banks to offer payday loan alternatives, but the plan misses the mark.

Federal Reserve Govs. Jerome Powell and Daniel Tarullo Thursday said they expect banks to have to meet significantly higher capital minimums after the central bank applies its capital surcharge rule for large globally risky banks to its stress test. That difference could significantly cost banks.

Bank earnings fell by 2% in the first quarter, mostly due to higher loan loss provisions because of troubles in the energy sector. But there were other alarming signs — and some positive ones — in the FDIC's Quarterly Banking Profile report. Following are the most significant:

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has reached a $190 million settlement with eight large financial institutions over residential mortgage-backed securities claims as the receiver of five banks that failed during the crisis.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said Thursday she would fight back against congressional efforts to delay or revamp the agency's payday lending proposal even while she acknowledged the plan could have been tougher.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo said Thursday that he anticipates the agency will eliminate the qualitative requirements in the annual stress testing program for most midsize banks as early as next year.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's long-awaited proposal to establish the first federal rules for payday, auto title and high-cost installment loans did not include a provision that banks had planned would allow them to compete by offering small-dollar installment loans.

While there were positive signals like loan growth and improved interest margins in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s first-quarter report card, there were also signs of trouble for the future, including larger institutions' ongoing exposure to the energy sector.

The Independent Community Bankers of America said that it agrees with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s support for “responsible innovation” in fintech but that it worries marketplace lenders have a “regulatory advantage.”

We need to adopt a more nuanced view of credit that considers not only the cost of credit, but also the cost of default and the cost of having no credit.

The drumbeat of news about hackers stealing millions of dollars by gaming the Swift interbank messaging system should have been a wake-up call for banking executives, but it's unclear how many of them answered it. Is it too late for them to shore up their defenses?

While existing state laws show that payday lending curbs lead to positive outcomes, those laws will still benefit from a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule.

The Federal Reserve detected more than 50 breaches of its computer systems from 2011 to 2015, Reuters reported, adding to signs that the central bank may be vulnerable to hackers or spies.

Ties to the energy sector hurt the banking industry in the first quarter as earnings fell 1.9% to $39.1 billion compared with a year earlier, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Wednesday.

Several civil rights and community development groups wrote Tuesday to urge the Federal Housing Finance Agency to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Community Business Bank in West Sacramento, Calif., has finally put the Troubled Asset Relief Program in the past.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Housing Finance Agency is set to make the sales of nonperforming loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more transparent, including providing information on trends at the individual pool level, according to a top agency official.