Law and regulation

Including the Wells settlement, Fannie has collected nearly $14 billion from eight large mortgage lenders since the start of 2013.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. still faces questions over how its resolution platform for systemically important firms will work. But international dialogue, a document detailing the agency's resolution strategy and the endorsement of a key rating agency highlighted progress during the year.

Commercial lending perked up after the government shutdown ended, though bankers are still having to cut deals on pricing to land business. Consumer lending continued to decelerate.

United Community Banks (UCBI) in Blairsville, Ga., plans to redeem $180 million of stock issued under the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program along with $16.8 million of other outstanding preferred stock.

Brazil will boost levies on withdrawals abroad to restrain a widening current account deficit and prevent a six-percentage point gap in tax levels from reducing the use of credit cards.

The Volcker Rule is a veritable leviathan in size and complexity, but the jury is out on whether it can truly avert another London Whale-type fiasco. Don’t hold your breath.

Wells Fargo & Co., the largest U.S. home lender, agreed to pay Fannie Mae $591 million to resolve repurchase demands on loans sold to the government-backed firm before Jan. 1, 2009.

A compilation of the year's favorite stories, as selected by the people who assigned and edited them. Picks exclude items that appear among Top Stories of 2013, as measured by audience size.

Banks have beefed up risk management teams dramatically over the past few years. But some are doing a much better job than others of getting their arms around the full extent of the regulations and operational challenges they face, says Ingmar Bromstrup, a Principal at The Boston Consulting Group.

We revisit some of the best comments readers posted to AmericanBanker.com and BankThink.com in 2013.

Banks got some regulatory relief in 2013 as federal regulators sharply curtailed their issuance of new enforcement actions.

Federal banking regulators are exploring whether to exempt collateralized debt obligations backed by trust-preferred securities from the Volcker Rule, the agencies said on Friday.

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

The Federal Reserve Board is due in 2014 to unveil an initial plan to clamp down on risks tied to financial institutions' reliance on short-term wholesale funding.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. issued a prompt corrective action against AztecAmerica Bank in Berwyn, Ill., in November and hit two other banks with consent orders.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a warning on the risks of virtual currencies, and the country's largest Bitcoin trading platform has shut down.

WashingtonFirst Bankshares (WFBI) in Reston, Va., is the latest lender to divest securities on concerns about the Volcker Rule's controversial ban on collateralized debt obligations.

A recurring theme for Federal Reserve Banks in 2013 had a familiar - and highly complicated - ring to it for the payments industry. The Fed banks want faster payments in the U.S., but the larger retail banks want to preserve their investments in earlier technology.

Banking regulators have until Monday to respond to a lawsuit filed by the American Bankers Association over the Volcker Rule.

Bankers have almost become used to the intense growth of new rules in the five years since the financial crisis, but some see a light at the end of the tunnel as the agencies inch toward the end of Dodd-Frank rulemakings and the economy improves.