Policy & Regulation

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the owner of several tax-preparation outlets that allegedly steered low-income clients into expensive loans against their anticipated refunds.

The Basel Committee needs to measure the efficacy of recently implemented rules, strengthen banks' operational risk requirements and make banks' risk models less variable. Luckily, secretary general William Coen has vowed to do just that.

Even small U.S. banks can end up doing business with institutions all across the world, but here are some jurisdictions were doing so is either outright forbidden or requires additional scrutiny.

General Electric's plan to sell most of its financing arm has been hailed as a sign that financial reform is successfully persuading "too big to fail" firms to break up. But the end of GE Capital just means that the conglomerates left standing are even more homogeneous and risk-prone.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board issued a proposal that would make a technical change to its rules governing the calculation of interest payments on excess cash reserves held at regional Fed banks in order to more seamlessly raise overall interest rates in the future.

BancorpSouth in Tupelo, Miss., has been freed from a consent order tied to Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering compliance.

As Basel III gets ready to turn five years old this summer, recently appointed Basel Committee secretary general William Coen is taking the necessary step of ensuring that new capital ratio, liquidity standard and leverage ratio rules work well together.

The Banking Committee is working to craft a bipartisan deal on regulatory relief, but if those efforts stall it's possible banking provisions could pop up again as part of key spending and fiscal measures later this year.

The cost of complying with New York State's proposed BitLicense regulations would wipe out many smaller digital currency businesses. But there is a middle ground: placing those businesses under the supervision of a self-regulating incubator that would help them develop robust yet affordable compliance programs.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including thoughts on regulatory complexity, Jamie Dimon's defense of the megabank model, and how vulnerable banks really are to tech startups.