Law and regulation

A Florida court on Friday sided with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the state over claims that a law firm charged illegal fees to consumers seeking foreclosure relief.

Federal regulators are working to streamline call reports for community banks in response to industry complaints that some of the requirements are unnecessary and increasingly burdensome.

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 from our social media platforms.

Discover Financial Services has entered into a written agreement with the Federal Reserve to improve its anti-money laundering procedures.

The Department of Justice is looking into whether the two dozen banks that facilitated bribes allegedly paid to FIFA officials knew they were doing so. The case is also a test of how much liability banks have over illegal payments they allow.

Provident Funding Associates, a private mortgage lender, has agreed to pay $9 million to settle allegations its brokers charged minorities higher fees and interest rates, federal regulators said Thursday.

Banks with more than $1 billion of assets are now required to report overdraft income in their call reports. Data released Wednesday reveals which banks rely most heavily on revenue from overdrafts — and which could be most vulnerable to looming changes in overdraft regulations.

Financial messaging organization Swift opened its KYC registry to fund distributors and custodians Thursday.

New servicing standards issued by the government-sponsored enterprises are unlikely to pose a hurdle for the biggest nonbank players in the market, but small servicers could find it more challenging.

Burdensome requirements prevent consumer reporting agencies from providing people with educational materials in a timely manner. The Facilitating Access to Credit Act would remove these arbitrary barriers.

Community banks had a banner first quarter, federal regulators said Wednesday — but it may come at a problematic time, politically speaking. The Quarterly Banking Profile may only deepen some lawmakers concern that small banks do not need regulatory relief if they are performing so well.

The U.S. is examining banks' conduct as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe of international soccer that has netted charges against 14 people, including officials with the sport's organizing body.

The American Bankers Association announced that Rob Nichols, head of the Financial Services Forum and a former top Treasury Department official, would be its next CEO. The move appears designed to boost the ABA's profile inside the beltway.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Britain's largest taxpayer-owned lender, could pay as much as $4.5 billion to resolve claims of misconduct in its handling of U.S. mortgage securities, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

U.S. banks rebounded in the first quarter as earnings rose 6.9% from a year earlier, to $39.8 billion, and nearly two-thirds of institutions reported higher profits from a year earlier, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Wednesday.

The explosive growth of largely unregulated online lenders has given them new opportunities to prey on unsuspecting borrowers.

The Federal Reserve's ability to provide emergency lending to institutions in the event of a crisis must be eliminated in order to end "too big to fail," said Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker.

Deutsche Bank will pay $55 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims that it misrepresented the value of derivatives during the financial crisis, materially misstating its accounts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's use of relatively new authority to punish actors for actions considered "abusive" is picking up steam, though the exact meaning of the term is not always easy to grasp.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is planning to issue rules to supervise large installment and vehicle title lenders, according to a recent report.