Law and regulation

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.

U.S. regulators on Tuesday gave certain firms, including large foreign institutions with a small footprint in the U.S., a guide on how to tailor their resolution plans that must be submitted by yearend.

The Fed is prepping a proposal to toughen Regulation W, which governs how a bank does business with its subsidiaries and affiliates.

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

Douglas Manditch, chairman and chief executive at Empire National Bank, believes community banks are being squeezed by "overzealous" regulation and are feeling pressure to sell.

Banks can do business with Internet-based lenders that don’t violate the law, the nation’s primary payment system said in a letter that followed warnings from regulators about the online firms’ practices.

Banks can still use properly tailored arbitration provisions to cut off class actions. Provisions should be explicit; silence is not a bank's friend when it comes to arbitration agreements.

Independent Bank in Ionia, Mich., has exited the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Everett Stern, who worked at HSBC Bank USA for two years, has given federal authorities emails and other documents that, he says, show HSBC committed anti-laundering violations beyond those covered by its $1.9 billion settlement. He has urged them to open a new investigation.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took regulatory actions against nine banks and freed 22 banks from orders in July, according to an enforcement update released Friday.

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

Big banks are urging regulators to make changes in how they calculate a long-term liquidity requirement that they claim is deeply flawed.