FDIC

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has been leading the charge on revamping the Community Reinvestment Act, but a big unknown is whether the other two regulators charged with carrying out the law are committed to moving ahead as swiftly on a reform plan.

Bank regulators propose to allow banks to phase in capital treatment of credit losses over three years.

Bank regulators have not even proposed a plan yet for revamping the Community Reinvestment Act, but stakeholders likely to weigh in on the plan are already establishing battle lines.

In addition to his highly publicized comments on trade and other political issues, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase used his annual letter to underscore the importance of job training for low-wage workers and call attention to an FDIC proposal that encourages banks to hire workers who have been convicted of minor crimes.

As part of a larger regulatory relief effort, regulators have raised the dollar-amount threshold for commercial real estate transactions that require a formal appraisal.

Policies to shore up banks’ corporate cultures have remained a low priority even though some regulators want to attack the issue head on. Strengthening a firm’s ethical values may best be left to a bank’s internal brass.

The agency said Cross River Bank and an affiliated debt settlement company misled customers into thinking a debt consolidation program would settle their debts and boost their creditworthiness.

In his last major speech as the agency’s No. 2, Thomas Hoenig said it would be a “serious policy mistake” to relax measures such as the supplementary leverage ratio, but he was more open to regulatory relief in other areas.

Just as promised, Republican lawmakers went to work Wednesday considering regulatory reform ideas that would go further than the Senate's tweaks of the Dodd-Frank Act.

In an update on the Deposit Insurance Fund, FDIC staff said the fund's ratio of reserves to estimated deposits will likely reach the required 1.35% level by the second half of 2018.