Law and regulation

David Hirschmann, the president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, has some suggestions for Richard Cordray. In a letter to the CFPB director he "cited concerns about the new 'abusive' standard that was added to the Dodd-Frank Act, along with the already statutory terms 'unfair and deceptive practices,'" writes American Banker’s Rob Blackwell.

While nine of the largest, most complex U.S. banks largely followed the same template in filing their "living wills," there were subtle but significant differences in their approach.

Federal Reserve officials spoke out twice in the past month to send a signal to money-market funds resisting tighter U.S. regulation. The message: New rules are coming, one way or another.

Still holding stakes in some 325 banks, the Treasury is expected to accept bigger discounts as it works to unwind the bailout-era program.

Dodd-Frank has had "crushing impact" on banks and businesses according report from the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Four New York thrifts — Dime Savings, CMS, NorthEast Community and Fairport Savings — received approval Monday to switch from federal to state charters, adding to a growing list of converts nationwide.

Neither the FSOC nor the OFR is up and running well enough to address systemic risk. The Systemic Risk Council, a new private-sector nonprofit group, will likely change that.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency provided an update Tuesday to its pilot program designed to turn foreclosed properties into rental homes, saying it had announced the first round of winning bidders.

Solera National Bank in Lakewood, Colo., has been freed from a consent order under which it had been operating for more than two years.

For some bankers, doing well by doing bad has become a way of life. If ever there was a time to raise the cost of wrongdoing, Liborgate is it.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners will hold a hearing on possible abuses in August. Yet a key regulator doubts the industry is seriously troubled.

Lending to American consumers, businesses and other entities is, as best practiced, far from a simple business. Going beyond this to dabble in opaque markets will inevitably degrade the competence with which banks' basic business is conducted.

Though banks must show they are resolvable, a financial institution can also use its resolution plan to advocate preferred solutions to issues on the horizon. And other lessons from the process so far.

Bankers are concerned about how sharing information with the Consumer Financial Protection Agency will affect client confidentiality. "Typically, information given to a third party loses attorney-client privilege, and prior legislation formally exempted the other bank regulators from that rule," writes American Banker's Joe Adler. "But Dodd-Frank did not expressly include the CFPB in that exemption.”

California lawmakers on Monday passed a package of foreclosure prevention bills that will slow foreclosures, impose stricter rules on mortgage servicers and potentially raise the cost of home loans.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter Monday to CFPB Director Richard Cordray urging him to take several steps, including defining what "abusive" products and practices are.

Nearly all smartphone users in Sweden will soon have access to a mobile payment service called MyWallet if their phones support it.

We won't have another nationwide bubble for 35 years or so. By then, cautionary tales from 2007-09 will seem irrelevant to those with modern skills and advanced risk management capability.

Two years into Dodd-Frank implementation, how is compliance going from an information technology perspective? Banks still have plenty of IT challenges to work through, agree consultants in a collection of mini-essays presented by Bank Systems & Technology. Curiously the lone voice of optimism the mix comes from a bank CEO.

FDIC loss-sharing deals are significantly down this year as failures get smaller, bidders become more competitive and the economic situation improves.