'I Want a Tom O'Brien Action Figure Doll': Comments of the Week
July 11, 2014 11:00 AM
American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and from our social media platforms.
(Image: Bloomberg News)
On the news that Thomas O'Brien, the new president and CEO of Sun Bancorp, plans to cut 242 jobs and close the bank's retail mortgage, health care and asset-based lending businesses:
"I want a Tom O'Brien action figure doll for Christmas!"
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(Image: iStock)
On the argument that regulators' undiscerning approach to enforcement is harming legitimate businesses and innocent consumers:
"I have seen from personal experience where an FDIC examiner basically told a bank to close a certain account or it would face HUGE problems in their next [Bank Secrecy Act] exam. The account in question was an [Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts ] and the examiner had absolutely NO understanding of why an IOLTA account is created. The bank had reviewed every transaction and found all of them consistent with the purpose of the account but that did not matter, the examiner wanted that account CLOSED, and so it was."
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On a push for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray to address regulators' overreliance on credit scores as a means of identifying responsible borrowers:
"While the sentiment here is right in that credit scores, especially following the recession, are not as good a predictor of willingness to pay as lenders would like to believe, dumping on the CFPB and Cordray is the wrong response. In fact, in its Qualified Mortgage rules, the CFPB did NOT include a credit score factor."
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(Image: Bloomberg News)
On a Pew report that argues consumers' concerns about overdraft charges demonstrate a pressing need for more regulation of the practice:
"I'll be willing to bet if you asked 1800 people at a gas station if they were concerned about the high cost of gasoline, you'd have more than an 87% affirmative response rate, but I don't see Pew advocating additional regulation of gasoline prices or for more regulation of refineries."
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On the news that mobile payments company Isis plans to rebrand in order to distance itself from the terrorist organization that is known by the same name:
"Unless [Isis] already planned to change its name, this is silly. Porsche did not change the name of its flagship 911 after September 11, 2001. I think changing names (brands) is risky and expensive."
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(Image: Bloomberg News)
On whether breaking up the country's largest banks would help their smaller competitors:
"[It's] hard to figure out how community banks will benefit from replacing the 6 largest banks with several dozen still very large banks, banks that will now be much more aggressive in competing for bank deposits since their access to capital market funding will be reduced."
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On whether the country's biggest banks still benefit from an implicit government guarantee:
"Let the [American Bankers Association] join with the [Independent Community Bankers of America] in supporting H.R. 2266 which will have the Fed do a thorough public analysis of the subsidy issue ... let the chips fall where they may. Taxpayers have a right to know the answer to this fundamental question. Policymakers need to know too so they can make informed choices."
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On the suggestion that bank holding companies should be divided into smaller subsidiaries:
"While it will be quite costly for the [bank holding company] to split 'shareholdership' among its subsidiaries, why not think about more homogeneous business models, taking into account examples of Citigroup and other industry giants in the post-crisis era when they were actively selling their unrelated businesses."
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(Image: Bloomberg News)
On an alternative way to deal with the threats to financial stability posed by systemically important financial institutions:
"I still believe the logical way to address too big to fail is with progressively higher capital ratios. This demands better performance as the institution grows to maintain the same [return on equity]."
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(Image: iStock)
