Policy & Regulation

In New Zealand, three Hells Angels' gang members were among four men arrested last week in an operation to target unlawful debt collections.

Dodd-Frank gives the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the authority to prohibit abusive practices, but just what does "abusive" mean? Banks and their lawyers are struggling to figure it out.

The federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac filed lawsuits Friday against 17 financial institutions, including some of the largest American banks, alleging that they made misrepresentations when they sold private-label mortgage-backed securities to Fannie and Freddie.

A single acquirer picked up the operations of two failed Georgia banks late Friday in a deal costing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. nearly $72 million.

The state attorneys general have a secret weapon in their negotiations with the largest mortgage servicers: the results of a HUD investigation into the banks' robo-signing practices.

Investor's stake in the future of Bank of America shows a boldness that banks now lack.

Regulators have pushed Bank of America Corp. to show what measures it could take if conditions worsen for the Charlotte, N.C., lender, according to people familiar with the situation.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it did not pay any incentives for foreclosure prevention efforts to Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the second quarter, as the two banks still need "substantial improvement" in their mortgage servicing operations. But Wells Fargo & Co. did make the cut.

In the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress included an exemption from the five percent risk-retention requirements applied to residential mortgages. Unfortunately, in their proposal to define what qualifies as a "qualified residential mortgage" under that exemption, regulators included only a very narrow test of borrowers' credit risk.

The deals announced Tuesday paved the way for Goldman's sale of its Litton subsidiary to Ocwen Loan Servicing. Both Goldman and Ocwen agreed to reforms in response of allegations of loan-servicing improprieties.