FDIC

Vice chairman set to leave agency on Monday; big regionals are caught in the middle, losing share to both the biggest national banks and community institutions.

The outgoing No. 2 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the agency's former chair say the proposed changes would increase the likelihood of another financial crisis.

FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig has been a tough critic of risky practices by big banks and a key voice among federal regulators in support of stronger capital requirements.

The senior official said U.S. regulatory agencies should not rush to complete certain final aspects of Basel III, to prevent the new standards from conflicting with existing rules.

AssetMark Trust plans to offer a product for the $1 billion in cash it holds for clients.

The international standards-setting body is weathering the infatuation with isolationism in the U.S. and elsewhere better than expected.

A new accounting standard will soon go into effect, but banks lack clarity on how to conform.

The rules to comply with the Community Reinvestment Act have become "formulaic and ossified" and must be changed to encourage lending practices the law originally intended to foster, the Fed's top regulator said.

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.

Gulfside Bank, which would be based in Sarasota, is angling to become southwest Florida's first new bank in a decade.

The agency's decision to lift a 2002 consent order against Ace Cash Express could lead to a revival of partnerships between national banks and payday lenders.