Law and regulation

Strengthening the underlying loan manufacturing process and diversifying this risk in the secondary market remain critical to ensuring the integrity of the market.

The $2 trillion-asset company will stop accepting new student loan applications on Oct. 12, the company said Thursday.

A federal judge has preliminarily approved a $3.2 million class-action settlement against a collection agency accused of posing as district attorneys to steal more than $20 million in fees from debtors.

The Basel system has sanctioned bank balance sheets on the verge of insolvency, but in doing so it may have permitted much more lending and much more trading.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has terminated a consent order for Idaho First Bank in McCall.

Will mortgage reform rectify past discriminatory practices or close the gap between white and nonwhite rates of homeownership? The major proposals in Washington show little interest in these critical questions.

The $1.1 billion-asset company said in a press release Wednesday that its bank had been released from a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Reserve Board.

While some saw Tim Pawlenty's unexpected recommendation to strike Syria as a sign he may be weighing a return to politics, the former Minnesota governor said he is focused on his "current job" as head of the Financial Services Roundtable.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a stark warning Wednesday to banks and other firms that exchange information with consumer reporting agencies, saying such companies will be heavily scrutinized for how they resolve customer disputes.

The recent leadership shuffle at Banesco USA may have resulted from problems in its compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act, according to a report in the South Florida Business Journal.

The idea of subjecting U.S. financial supervision to peer review by European and Asian financial regulators with their own problems is a bit rich to swallow.

Lenders continued to face challenges with loan growth in the second quarter as interest rates increased, a Federal Reserve Board report said Wednesday.

The Dodd-Frank Act aimed to make the mortgage market safer by requiring originators to hold onto a portion of the home loans they generate. American Banker Washington bureau chief Rob Blackwell argues that under heavy industry pressure regulators have failed to live up to the spirit of the law and gutted the provision.

Steven Antonakes, the long-time acting No. 2 at the CFPB, has now permanently assumed that position.

If spun off from firms that rate corporate debt, raters of asset-backed securities would have less incentive to sugarcoat ratings in exchange for the promise of an issuer’s other business.

The owner of a funeral home in Illinois is among several business people nationwide who have reported to the Better Business Bureau that they see no evidence they received any services after paying a California collection agency thousands of dollars to recover customer debts.

Citibank has agreed to pay $55,000 to settle a complaint by the Connecticut attorney general that the bank was aware of a security flaw in its online banking service that resulted in hackers obtaining payment card data and stealing about $2.7 million.

Doomsayers conveniently forget that the business case for introducing debit cards was one of cost avoidance for the banks, not revenue.

The risk retention requirement was supposed to ensure lenders had "skin in the game" when making mortgages. Instead, regulators appear to have abandoned that concept by crafting an exception so large that most single-family mortgages will be exempted.

Online lender Western Sky Financial says it has laid off 94 employees on a South Dakota Indian reservation following its decision to suspend operations.