PayThink

Only a strong QM rule can prevent a repeat of the past and protect consumers from the type of risky and irresponsible lending that preceded the foreclosure crisis.

As the effective date for compliance with the CFPB's final remittance rule approaches, bankers are saying meeting all the requirements will not feasible. "It's one of those 'you can't get there from here’ regulations," says an industry lawyer.

With financial institutions keeping interest rates lower and fees higher on new commercial hybrid accounts, institutions are, in fact, discouraging commercial clients from switching to their new products.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau put out its first issue of "Supervisory Highlights," which provides an overview of issues that have emerged in examinations by the agency.

When the OCC took over supervising thrifts, we evaluated the model being used and determined the cost to keep it viable was not justified. Superior interest rate risk models are available from dozens of vendors.

While ICBA supports further study, we hope Congress will come to the conclusion that it should never have been proposed for financial institutions that have no international exposures or are not of a certain size.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Housing Finance Agency announced plans to create a new mortgage database, more comprehensive and streamlined than existing state and federal ones, to guide policy decisions.

Efforts should clarify recourse risk for originators and underwriters, help realign supply and demand in the housing market and assist homeowners.

Few legislators will have much appetite for setting bank capital policy, but it would be a gross error to mistake that discretion for lack of interest in what those policies will do to local economies.

The orderly liquidation authority of the Dodd-Frank Act requires a "minimum recovery" for creditors of troubled systemically important financial institutions, i.e. no less then what they would have received in normal bankruptcy proceedings. Rules to implement that standard could reassure the markets, say industry observers.