Policy & Regulation

Trade group for retail banking adds six new members to its staff.

The burgeoning growth of mobile payments could become the tipping point for proposed national legislation that would force merchants to charge state sales taxes for the first time on many goods and services sold through online channels, a national tax expert tells PaymentsSource.

The Justice Department on Thursday ordered First Niagara Financial Group to sell 26 of the branches it has agreed to buy from HSBC Holdings. The branches are in the Buffalo area and have $1.6 billion of deposits.

The New York banking department has reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley to implement new mortgage servicing standards after signing a similar deal with Goldman Sachs in September.

Gruenberg says while regulators should force institutions to lower their risk of failure, having a "credible" system for winding firms down will help level the industry's playing field.

The casino industry is turning a corner, but the long-term impact of the so-called Durbin amendment on Global Cash Access Holdings Inc.’s revenues remains unclear, executives from the company told analysts during a Nov. 9 conference call to discuss third-quarter earnings.

Federal regulators have ordered 14 mortgage services to help borrowers that were harmed by foreclosure errors, but left it up to them to develop common remediation guidelines. The servicers and their consultants met in Washington this week to try and reach a consensus.

Banks should adhere to high moral standards by discouraging people from going needlessly into debt. The concept of "fly now, pay later" does not promote consumers’ financial responsibility.

The Volcker Rule, enacted as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, has lately received a lot of adverse commentary. The complexity of the draft implementing regulation, and the clear indication in the regulators' accompanying questions that they did not know how to make the rule work, has produced a new round of criticism. But that’s only one of the problems this rule creates, and a relatively minor one.

Sandra Fisher Martins will brook no lawyerly explanations for impenetrable, convoluted writing. People have a “right to understand,” she says in a recently posted TED video.