Policy & Regulation

Fannie and Freddie should offer upfront risk-sharing options in order to give lenders an opportunity to lower their guarantee fees while encouraging more private capital and competition to flow into the secondary mortgage market.

The details of the final Des-Moines-Seattle Home Loan Bank deal made it clear why this merger worked when past attempts had not and gave clues as to whether other institutions could one day follow suit. Following are three items that jumped out.

After four years of interagency wrangling, regulators are close to re-proposing a plan that would set minimum standards for executive compensation for banks and credit unions, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry said Tuesday.

Six federal regulators on Tuesday issued a final joint policy statement laying out standards for assessing financial institutions' diversity policies.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's "qualified mortgage" rule has put a damper on the recovery of the housing market, according to an American Bankers Association survey.

Farmers Capital Bank in Frankfort, Ky., has completed the redemption of its Troubled Asset Relief program preferred shares for about $10.1 million.

The harsh capital treatment of Trups holdings under Basel III undoes the regulatory relief already extended to community banks that had invested in the securities.

In a letter to nine lenders, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said investigators uncovered identity-theft schemes hatched by tellers at some of the biggest institutions.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued a proposal Monday laying out two options to deal with the growing potential threat from interest rate risk in the banking sector, with one entailing new minimum capital requirements and the other establishing strong supervisory benchmarks.

Several weighty issues remain on the agenda for policymakers over the next few months, including everything from living wills to regulatory relief to a long-lost compensation rule.