Law and regulation

At least three large U.S. banks are preparing to go to market with new small-dollar installment loan products in a move that could potentially disrupt the payday lending industry.

Maria Vullo, still stuck in limbo as acting superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, is hindered from putting her mark on the agency until she gets confirmed. So a quiet guessing game is going on about how her supervisory philosophy will compare with her predecessor Benjamin Lawsky.

Nearly a quarter-century before his wife was on the verge of winning a presidential nomination, then-Democratic candidate Bill Clinton was seen as supporting "true nationwide banking," though some worried he would also expand the Community Reinvestment Act.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and our social media platforms.

Along with publishing the long-awaited beneficial ownership rule, the Treasury and Justice Departments urged Congress to pass legislation to put the U.S. on par with foreign partners in the fight to curb the flow of illicit funds.

One of the last surviving black-owned banks in Chicago was rescued from its loan-related woes by a Ghanaian-American family.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss's Gemini Trust Company LLC has gotten a New York State regulator's blessing to trade another kind of cryptocurrency on its bitcoin exchange.

The finance industry pushed back against a proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Thursday that would ban arbitration clauses in consumer contracts.

Going forward, Fannie Mae will be relying more on loan guarantee fee income from its single-family and multifamily businesses.

Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's pledge to replace Fed Chair Janet Yellen with a Republican is a break from recent presidential tradition and might further politicize the central bank, observers said.

Requirements that banks share anti-money-laundering information should extend to fraud and cyber risks, to connect the dots between bad actors and their transfer of money.

Fannie Mae will make a $919 million dividend payment to the U.S. Treasury Department after reporting a first-quarter profit driven by fees for guaranteeing loans against default and credit-related income.

Students with excess cash but no bank account have fallen victim to predatory financial vendors, but the government can take steps to bypass the middleman.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set on Thursday to issue a proposal that would ban the use of arbitration clauses that prevent consumers from bringing class action lawsuits. The proposal on arbitration is a major setback for the financial services industry, which will face potentially higher expenses to defend lawsuits.

The Treasury Department will release a white paper next week outlining "research and recommendations' related to marketplace lending as a capstone to its nearly yearlong inquiry into the fast-growing industry.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced Wednesday it had raised a cap on the amount of multifamily loans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy from lenders, boosting it to $35 billion effective immediately.

Freddie Mac's second quarterly loss in less than a year makes it clear profitability is getting tougher as it shrinks. But it's a concern that must be weighed against more long-term efforts to reduce Freddie's overall credit risk exposure.

Seven banks including Bank of America, Barclays and Citigroup agreed to pay $324 million to settle claims they conspired to rig the ISDAfix benchmark, which is used in the sale of interest-rate derivatives and other financial instruments.

With agencies created by the Dodd-Frank Act embroiled in court battles and continued questions dealing with "too big to fail," can anyone honestly say the reform law is working?

Just six months out from the general election, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s positions on banking issues remain a complete mystery aside from a general pledge to roll back the Dodd-Frank Act.