PayThink

Bricks-and-mortar locations aren’t yet obsolete. Leading banks are responding to changing consumer demands by developing specialized branch formats, increasing their focus on advice and emphasizing proactive engagement with customers.

In response to repeated charges from Republicans that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act enshrines too-big-to-fail policies, Barney Frank issued a paper analyzing how the legislation ends them.

If your bank is gung-ho to issue prepaid cards, think again. Focus on how to retain checking account customers, rather than emulating Green Dot and Chase and issuing fee-based "prepaid cards" as a new (already outdated) product.

The CFPB may have found a middle way on the safe harbor vs. "rebuttable presumption" debate in the forthcoming "qualified mortage standard. Lenders might get protection from lawsuits about ability-to-pay considerations, but only when the interest rate is in an average range

Banks that wait to be told what to do won’t thrive because the possibility of surprising and delighting customers with innovation is exactly zero when you wait for them to tell you what to build.

Switching out three VaR models in less than a year raises questions about not only the models' stability but also how risks across large, systemically important institutions can be compared.

The process for assigning Legal Entity Identifiers is causing conflict on the global regulatory scene. At issue: Who gets to assign them? Some folks are just glad the CFTC is rolling ahead with a plan, but members of the official implementation group have concerns about how it might hinder broad adoption.

Without one, community banks will face increased risk of litigation they cannot afford. This could push many of them out of the mortgage market.

The Dodd-Frank Act puts lots of new requirements on hedge funds. Are the new regulations cramping fund managers' style? A new survey says no, and that the funding industry is "adjusting well."

Former FDIC chairman Sheila Bair wants to ban the revolving door and, moreover, believes bank examiners should be required to make a lifelong commitment to the profession. Not everyone agrees with this prescription.