PayThink

CFPB Director Richard Cordray is expected to stick out his recess appointment term through 2013 regardless of who wins the presidency. After that various different scenarios could play out.

In all the regulatory discussion of small banks vs. megabanks, what about midsized banks? Some of those banks that are over the $50 billlion asset threshold, but far from being a Wall Street behemoth, are hiring their own lobbyists.

The potential consequences include rising interest rates, dropping home values, a resurgence of foreclosures and a dramatic, perhaps generational loss of consumer confidence.

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.