Law and regulation

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling is challenging the idea that regulators should restrict banks' activities based on a judgment about the potential harm to their reputations.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

The dramatic headwinds of the Affordable Care Act will result in increasing defaults and bankruptcy for many healthcare operators. Lenders should start evaluating risk in their healthcare portfolios now.

The agency's "Supervisory Highlights" report focused on a slew of issues and federal violations that the agency found while examining payday lenders, debt collectors and consumer reporting agencies that resulted in $70 million in remediation payments to consumers.

House Republicans aren't likely to cease their attacks against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau anytime soon, but they appear to be swapping playbooks.

The 2009 law that restricts a range of fees and practices has become the devil you know for the credit card industry.

House lawmakers on Wednesday sharply questioned the speed of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's response to problems with its employee ratings system after discovering that a consulting firm identified disparities based on race, age and gender nearly eight months ago.

New York banking regulator Benjamin Lawsky said Wednesday his office will investigate claims that Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN) and other servicers require distressed borrowers to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to receive mortgage modifications.

Esther George, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said Wednesday that community banks are facing headwinds from low interest rates and the cost of complying with the Dodd-Frank Act.

Recently raised regulatory concerns about the massive transfer of mortgage servicing rights from banks to nonbanks are fueling industry hopes that policymakers may be open to addressing the issue.

The Senate confirmed economist Stanley Fischer to the Federal Reserve Board Wednesday afternoon.

Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday bestowed some advice to New York University's 2014 graduating class, telling them to be curious, listen to others and accept that failure is going to happen.

Before the FSOC or other agencies start to impose capital requirements on nonbank financial companies, let's make sure we understand the business models and the risks that these firms actually take.

A task force of state and federal authorities set up in 2012 to probe the mortgage-bond sales that fueled the financial crisis has "more than a dozen ongoing investigations," Michael P. Stephens, the acting inspector general for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said.

If banks and supervisors are serious about achieving regulatory excellence, they need to make the people in charge of product lines take ownership of compliance.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked a judge to dismiss American International Group Inc.'s lawsuit against the state's top financial regulator, saying the insurer is trying to interfere with a probe of unlicensed overseas insurance sales.

The Senate voted to end debate Tuesday evening on the nomination of Stanley Fischer to serve as vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

The consensus on Twitter is that a $2.6 billion fine for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes is not punishment enough for the Swiss banking giant.

The Justice Department likely hopes that Credit Suisse's guilty plea to a criminal charge will squash the idea that some large institutions are too important to the economy to prosecute. But experts say the issue is more complicated than that, arguing that the debate will live on. Here's why.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is urging companies that use credit scoring models to treat medical debt differently than other debt.