Law and regulation

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Monday finalized its rule to help stay-at-home partners get a credit card.

Tens of thousands of homeowners who took out mortgages with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will begin to receive their settlement payments this week for botched foreclosure practices.

With a federal moratorium on commercial ownership of industrial loan companies coming to an end, the question of whether retailers and other nonfinancial firms should own banks has been turned on its head in the wake of the crisis and Dodd-Frank.

A heightened regulatory focus may be a direct result of early positioning as a business distanced from the rest of the payments industry, which may be keeping more banks from offering prepaid products.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is seeking $41 million in a lawsuit filed against two former executives of Lynnwood, Wash.-based City Bank, which failed in 2010.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper filed a lawsuit against Advantage Debt Solutions Inc., a Charlotte, N.C. debt settlement firm, for charging upfront fees while failing to deliver any services.

Banking, mortgage rules on the agenda at statehouses around the country.

Many companies in the payments industry have strong, influential women as top executives. These women rarely had a clear path ahead of them when they started out.

Regulators shut down Douglas County Bank in Douglasville, Ga., and Parkway Bank in Lenoir, N.C. Between them they had assets of $425 million and will cost the Deposit Insurance Fund an estimated $105 million.

First Financial Northwest (FFNW) in Renton, Wash., has been freed from an enforcement action.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took enforcement actions against six banks last month that tied to their capital, compliance and financial condition, according to a series of orders released Friday.

To avoid unwanted scrutiny from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other regulators, banks need to start thinking about "what is fair, not just what is legal," banking attorneys say.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a rule Friday attempting to clarify how it would use its Civil Penalty Fund, which holds money it collects as a result of fines against financial companies.

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of lawmakers is looking to amend a lending provision that classifies certain types of loans used to purchase manufactured housing as predatory.

BNC Bancorp (BNCN) in Thomasville, N.C., plans to buy back its Troubled Asset Relief Program shares from investors who bought them in a Treasury Department auction last summer.

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau works on finalizing mortgage rules, Kelly Cochran, the assistant director for regulations, says it is taking concerns about burdens on small lenders and access to credit "very seriously."

The Brown-Vitter bill on "Too Big to Fail" faces significant challenges to passage, yet it is likely to have an impact on big banks and regulation anyway. Here's why.

Unrealistic capital requirements and strict deadlines would force megabanks to sell assets, removing their value from the U.S. and global economies permanently.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council, established by Title I of the Dodd-Frank Act, identified seven significant areas of concern on Thursday that policymakers need to address in order to contain threats to the U.S. financial system.

A system where ratings are assigned to a nationally recognized statistical ratings organization by an independent public utility offers the best shot at avoiding another secondary mortgage market meltdown.