Compliance

U.S. and European banks are spending a total of as much as $20 billion a year on technology to enable fixed-income dealers to comply with new regulations such as MiFID II, according to a report.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said “bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight.”

Uber Technologies Inc. said information from 2.7 million U.K. customers was taken in a 2016 security breach that hit 57 million riders and drivers globally and that the company kept secret from the public and authorities until recently.

With the holiday shopping season, there is an inevitable dark side — an increase in transactions means an increase in fraud. This is to some extent the cost of doing business; fraud will always be a percentage of overall transaction volume.

The CFPB's data-sharing guidance was widely applauded, but mistrust remains between banks and aggregators. Advocates want regulators to take action.

The trade group wants Equifax to reimburse community banks for costs tied to the massive data breach at the credit bureau this year. The ICBA also wants a court to order Equifax to improve its security measures.

Even though they do not face the immediate prospect of regulation requiring an open-banking policy, American banks should act as if they do.

One estimate says 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs will go unfilled by 2021. Banks are looking to military veterans, universities and even high schools to help fill the gap.

The most important policy question facing banking, brokerage and insurance companies is putting a framework in place that very quickly defines data ownership rights across the financial value chain.

Norwegian banks have been keenly aware of — and concerned about — the prospect of mobile wallets developed in Silicon Valley affecting their own services. So much so that a group of banks has begun preparing to merge their payments systems into one platform and have it up and running by next August.