Regulation

The idea of subjecting U.S. financial supervision to peer review by European and Asian financial regulators with their own problems is a bit rich to swallow.

Lenders continued to face challenges with loan growth in the second quarter as interest rates increased, a Federal Reserve Board report said Wednesday.

The Dodd-Frank Act aimed to make the mortgage market safer by requiring originators to hold onto a portion of the home loans they generate. American Banker Washington bureau chief Rob Blackwell argues that under heavy industry pressure regulators have failed to live up to the spirit of the law and gutted the provision.

Steven Antonakes, the long-time acting No. 2 at the CFPB, has now permanently assumed that position.

If spun off from firms that rate corporate debt, raters of asset-backed securities would have less incentive to sugarcoat ratings in exchange for the promise of an issuer’s other business.

The owner of a funeral home in Illinois is among several business people nationwide who have reported to the Better Business Bureau that they see no evidence they received any services after paying a California collection agency thousands of dollars to recover customer debts.

Citibank has agreed to pay $55,000 to settle a complaint by the Connecticut attorney general that the bank was aware of a security flaw in its online banking service that resulted in hackers obtaining payment card data and stealing about $2.7 million.

Doomsayers conveniently forget that the business case for introducing debit cards was one of cost avoidance for the banks, not revenue.

The risk retention requirement was supposed to ensure lenders had "skin in the game" when making mortgages. Instead, regulators appear to have abandoned that concept by crafting an exception so large that most single-family mortgages will be exempted.

Online lender Western Sky Financial says it has laid off 94 employees on a South Dakota Indian reservation following its decision to suspend operations.