Policy & Regulation

No-fee digital bank accounts subsidized by the Federal Reserve would help community banks draw in new customers and pay for technology upgrades, proponents of the idea say. But it's a hard sell to executives skeptical of government involvement in retail banking.

The huge buffers that banks built up over the pandemic are protecting the financial system from looming threats, regulators told President Biden during a meeting that also touched on climate change, extension of credit to the underserved and other topics.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued a proposal this month laying out how banks should treat cryptocurrencies held on their balance sheets. It could give stablecoins, which are tied to traditional assets, an edge over more volatile digital assets like Bitcoin.

President Joe Biden plans to meet with regulators on Monday to discuss the health of the system they oversee and how his administration’s priorities, including on climate change and inclusion, can best be addressed.

A 2017 investigation into the fake-accounts scandal — conducted by the board of directors with a major assist from the law firm Shearman & Sterling — was billed as independent and objective. Was it?

A state regulator group has agreed to pause its lawsuit challenging Figure Technologies’ application as the federal agency reviews chartering policies. But analysts caution that the underlying conflict over nontraditional firms seeking banking powers is far from resolved.

A congressional hearing on reforming the National Flood Insurance Program focused on whether mortgage companies need to disclose incremental risks even if a homeowner lives outside a federally designated floodplain.

The Biden administration wants financial institutions to tell the government more about their customers to help the IRS thwart wealthy tax evaders. But critics say the plan could threaten account data security and the privacy of even low-income consumers.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the market dislocations of the past year resulting from the pandemic had changed the impact that the supplementary leverage ratio was having on the largest banks. After temporarily easing the requirement, the central bank is considering longer-term reforms.

In a reversal of a Trump-era decision, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says it has the legal authority to test lenders for potential violations of a law protecting military borrowers.