PayThink

When bankers heard that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney had selected Paul Ryan as his running mate, most likely cheered the news. The Wisconsin congressman is, after all, the Capitol Hill antithesis of Barney Frank. He's the Republicans' standard-bearer for limited government in all its forms and has gone into greater depth than anyone else in his party in laying out a plan for limiting it.

The SEC announced that it has made its first award in a whistleblower program under Dodd-Frank, a Wall Street Journal blog post reports.

Central bank policy rates, overnight unsecured borrowing rates, commercial paper rates, Treasury bills and repo rates all would be open to potential manipulation, just like Libor.

Regulatory agencies have jointly proposed new standards, required by Dodd-Frank, for mortgage appraisals. But many of the standards “have largely already been adopted by the industry, observers said, due to the fallout from the housing crisis,” write American Banker’s Joe Adler and Kate Berry.

A federal charter for National Consumer Credit Corporations could help community bankers serve (and profit off) low-to-moderate-income consumers.

Technologies like automated underwriting held great promise to manage risk while easing the pain of the mortgage experience for borrowers. But a lack of discipline ushered in an environment where simple rules decide who obtains credit.

Standard Chartered did a lousy job of picking a monitor on behalf of regulators who'd flag its compliance lapses in the past. Now New York's Department of Financial Services must pick an independent monitor to oversee the British bank's activities for the next two years.

Collaboration gets lots of talk within the U.S. CU community. Credit Union Journal has tried to do its part with the launch of CUllaborationNation.com, and we continue to invite your submissions of white papers, procedure manuals, policies, videos.

Since the public announcement of the rule making, there have been extensive comments and quotes in the trade publication from individuals and associations opposed to such a revision to the rule. Remember, no credit union advocate ever wielded a sword mightier than their computer when they sit down to e-mail their regulator.

Third-party integration was a significant challenge for many credit unions, so much so that it wasn't unusual to see a credit union adopt its core processor's offerings simply in pursuit of the path of least resistance. Today, technology has relieved that burden somewhat.