Economy

The Subsidy Reserve Act would bring into the open the financial benefits of being "too big to fail" — benefits the big banks claim to be nonexistent.

Industry groups are urging the Pentagon to soften its proposed expansion of a rate cap on loans sold to service members, but banks face opposition from dozens of advocacy groups that favor tougher restrictions.

It is fitting that Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the Apple Watch presentation by showing off a Mickey Mouse watch face. The Apple Watch shares a lot more than its design sense with Disney's successful MagicBand wearables.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the downside of public banking and the vulnerabilities unaddressed by global regulators' bail-in plan for megabanks.

Mobile technology has enabled financial services in a number of African countries, and MasterCard is working to expand this model by tying it directly to a national identity program in Egypt.

All 31 firms that took this year's Dodd-Frank Act Stress Test had enough capital to withstand the Fed's hypothetical severe economic scenario, but several of the largest banks were teetering on the edge of the leverage and risk-based capital requirements.

Michael Stegman, a top housing policy adviser, urged regulators on Thursday to bring more private capital into the market, even in the absence of legislative momentum.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency won't keep renewing initiatives like the Home Affordable Refinance Program in perpetuity, even if it is extended again before it expires in December, Director Mel Watt said Wednesday.

Some newcomers to mortgage servicing did not hedge because hedging would have increased costs. Had rates moved up, the strategy would have paid off handsomely. Instead, it worked against them.

Francisco Gonzalez, who has been warning for almost a decade of the technological transformation set to engulf the financial industry, said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona March 4 that his bank would define itself as a software company.

KeyCorp has named Mark Danahy president of its mortgage operations. Danahy had been managing director of Citigroup's U.S. mortgage operation from July 2011 to May 2014 and, before that, was president and chief executive of PHH Mortgage.

The Financial Stability Board’s proposed capital and long-term debt requirements would only go part of the way toward ending the risk of government bailouts. If regulators really want to get rid of too big to fail, they need to deal with over-the-counter derivatives market.

The paper by a consultant with the Office of Financial Research said that projected losses in the 2013 and 2014 tests were "nearly perfectly correlated," suggesting that the tests have become "less informative."

Here's the sales pitch: use the service as much as you want for a flat monthly fee of under $10, potentially saving money over paying per transaction. It sounds like Netflix, but it's a new and fairly unconventional approach to how Cardtronics is selling ATM access.

Though stress tests are widely viewed as a successful and critical exercise, there are growing concerns that regulators — and the banks themselves — may have become too reliant on them, overshadowing other aspects of the supervisory process.

International remittances grew at a number of banks last year, according to new data, but anti-money-laundering rules may make the fee-based business too expensive to keep.

Eagle Bancorp in Bethesda, Md., is looking to raise funds to exit the Small Business Lending Fund.

An audit of Ginnie Mae financials identified four "material weaknesses" and one "significant deficiency," primarily related to the accounting of $6.6 billion in defaulted loans made by the failed lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

Embattled mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial faces up to $26 billion in damage claims by bondholders and a greater risk of being fired as a mortgage servicer on thousands of small, private-label trusts.