Policy & Regulation

Financial messaging organization Swift opened its KYC registry to fund distributors and custodians Thursday.

New servicing standards issued by the government-sponsored enterprises are unlikely to pose a hurdle for the biggest nonbank players in the market, but small servicers could find it more challenging.

Burdensome requirements prevent consumer reporting agencies from providing people with educational materials in a timely manner. The Facilitating Access to Credit Act would remove these arbitrary barriers.

Community banks had a banner first quarter, federal regulators said Wednesday — but it may come at a problematic time, politically speaking. The Quarterly Banking Profile may only deepen some lawmakers concern that small banks do not need regulatory relief if they are performing so well.

The U.S. is examining banks' conduct as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe of international soccer that has netted charges against 14 people, including officials with the sport's organizing body.

The American Bankers Association announced that Rob Nichols, head of the Financial Services Forum and a former top Treasury Department official, would be its next CEO. The move appears designed to boost the ABA's profile inside the beltway.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Britain's largest taxpayer-owned lender, could pay as much as $4.5 billion to resolve claims of misconduct in its handling of U.S. mortgage securities, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

U.S. banks rebounded in the first quarter as earnings rose 6.9% from a year earlier, to $39.8 billion, and nearly two-thirds of institutions reported higher profits from a year earlier, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Wednesday.

The explosive growth of largely unregulated online lenders has given them new opportunities to prey on unsuspecting borrowers.

The Federal Reserve's ability to provide emergency lending to institutions in the event of a crisis must be eliminated in order to end "too big to fail," said Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker.