Law and regulation

Visa Europe Ltd. plans to "significantly" reduce the fees it sets for processing cross- border credit-card payments in a bid to allay European Union competition concerns, the bloc's antitrust watchdog said.

It’s important that models for stress-testing be capable of representing the nuances of the questions they are asked to answer. Insights would be lost if models are kept too simple.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's push to encourage private lenders to refinance student loan debt is raising questions about whether the agency is focusing on the right target.

Scott Simon, head of mortgage-backed securities operations at fixed income giant Pacific Investment Management Co., argues on the eve of his retirement that the government-sponsored housing enterprises should continue to play a major role in housing finance.

JPMorgan Chase said it will face enforcement action from federal regulators over its collection practices and add-on products commonly appended to credit cards.

Sen. Mike Crapo, the top GOP lawmaker on the Senate Banking Committee, is requesting more information about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s data collection practices.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board said Monday that the largest U.S. bank holding companies will submit results of their company-run, midyear stress tests to regulators this summer.

Bankers truly face a Catch-22 in the lending business these days, thanks to "qualified mortgage" and disparate impact laws.

The gradual erosion of net interest margins and a compensatory shift toward risky new lending strategies for additional yield is a major factor for high chargeoffs and community bank failures.

Regulators on Friday seized two banks owned by the $1.6 billion-asset company. The failures could tangle the Lansing, Mich., company in what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. calls the cross-guarantee liability, meaning that the agency has the ability to charge Capitol's nine surviving banks with the cost of the failures.

New York's Attorney General charged Bank of America and Wells Fargo with hundreds of cases of failure to comply with the national mortgage servicing settlement recently. The claims made for lots headlines but may prove a non-starter in court.

Penny Pritzker, Obama's pick for Commerce Secretary, acted commendably in the failure of Superior Bank, says former FDIC chairman William Isaac, who represented her in talks with regulators at the time.

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A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition and other consumer groups say the bank regulators did not go far enough in proposing changes to Community Reinvestment Act examinations.

The $9.3 billion foreclosure settlement might not have provided a lot of monetary relief, but it provided plenty of comic relief for viewers of the Daily Show.

After receiving thousands of complaints from consumers, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is encouraging private student lenders and the government to help lower payments for borrowers.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke highlighted ongoing efforts to monitor threats and vulnerabilities in four critical areas: systemically important financial institutions, shadow banking, asset markets, and the nonfinancial sector.

Banks, conflicted by moral hazard, will always fight for maximum FDIC coverage at the least possible cost, since the FDIC is ultimately backed by Other People’s Money.

A debt settlement firm and its owner were charged with mail fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy in what prosecutors call a four-year scheme that bilked customers to pay expenses at a nightclub, luxury car leases and credit card bills.