Law and regulation

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau needs to improve its practices related to employee diversity and the inclusion of women, according to a report issued this week by the Office of the Inspector General of the Federal Reserve.

Banks can expect to incur higher costs in several areas during the implementation of a settlement agreement to improve the accuracy of credit reports. But they might benefit in the long run by getting better information on borrowers.

A coalition of midsize banks is preparing to oppose a bill eliminating a key Dodd-Frank Act threshold unless the language is further tweaked.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who has voiced concern over proposals to increase congressional influence over U.S. monetary policy, will meet with the powerful chairman of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday.

Thomas Depping would have been content to keep making small-business loans through his Houston-area bank, but regulatory pressure led him to give up his charter and form a nonbank lender with the same business model.

Lawmakers supported the credit union tax exemption at an industry conference on Tuesday, downplaying efforts to take another look at the issue this year as part of comprehensive tax reform.

Lucrative sale of a subprime lending unit. Big credit card deal. Clear business plan. It's looking like a good year for Citi — provided it passes the CCAR stress test this week and fills a key executive post.

Seeking a uniform process for card-not-present transactions in the Single Euro Payments Area throughout Europe, the European Payments Council has created a blueprint for an interoperable card and terminal infrastructure.

The Subsidy Reserve Act would bring into the open the financial benefits of being "too big to fail" — benefits the big banks claim to be nonexistent.

The European Parliament on March 9 voted in favor of capping interchange fees for domestic and cross-border transactions, a move that many European banks anticipated.

Tiered regulation could bring about a number of useful changes for regional banks, including a more customized approach to determining capital adequacy and simplified resolution planning requirements.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's second arbitration study indicates the bureau's intent to regulate financial institutions' inclusion of clauses that prevent customers from suing.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Monday said that, should he run for president in 2016, his progressive platform would include breaking up the largest Wall Street banks.

The Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase were far apart last week in how much revenue the company would be making after the kind of economic shock envisioned in the Dodd-Frank stress test. The gap has JPM observers cautiously awaiting the results of this week's CCAR test.

New York's Amalgamated Bank is hoping to do more business with political action committee and left-leaning customers as its retail business shrinks.

When regulators use asset size as a yardstick, they impose unnecessary rules on larger financial institutions that employ traditional banking models.

Banks have spent a lot of money in order to comply with stress-test requirements. But they will only realize the value on their investments if they integrate stress-test tools and results into their daily decision-making process.

Two activist groups are urging the Fed and OCC to investigate whether OneWest used donations and other sweeteners to buy community support for its sale to CIT.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the downside of public banking and the vulnerabilities unaddressed by global regulators' bail-in plan for megabanks.

Observers fear state regulator Benjamin Lawsky's proposal to model anti-laundering reviews after Sarbanes-Oxley requirements could thin ranks of compliance specialists and slow monitoring.