Law and regulation

The House Financial Services Committee held its first full hearing of the year on Wednesday, with lawmakers divided on the future of the Federal Housing Administration.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will rejoin the Council on Foreign relations later this month, the organization announced on Wednesday.

The EMV smartcard standard is so commonly combined with a PIN code that most consumers know it simply as "chip-and-PIN." But Visa and MasterCard don't agree on whether PIN use should be a priority when the U.S. adopts the EMV standard.

A crime ring based in New Jersey created thousands of fake identities to obtain 25,000 credit cards and steal more than $200 million in one of the largest scams of its type, the Justice Department said.

HSBC's reputation was "crushed" after it agreed to pay $1.92 billion to settle U.S. probes of money laundering in places such as Mexico, Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver said.

A crime ring based in New Jersey created thousands of fake identities to obtain 25,000 credit cards and steal more than $200 million in one of the largest scams of its type, the Justice Department said.

Regulators seem obsessed with preventing false negatives: loans that pass underwriting and then default. They should consider the costs of false positives, i.e., restricting loans that probably would perform fine.

Royal Bank of Scotland will pay about $612 million in fines for manipulating interest rates, the second-largest penalty imposed in a global regulatory probe.

The Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) and Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) standards don't appear to have a lot in common, but there is one alarming similarity — the tortoise-like pace of migration which threatens deadlines for both.

A unit of United Community Financial (UCFC) in Youngstown, Ohio, has been freed from an enforcement action with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Ohio Division of Financial Institutions.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s board of directors will consider a proposal next week to clarify the definition of deposits protected by the agency.

Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House banking panel, is asking Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the committee's chairman, to hold a hearing with regulators on the $8.5 billion mortgage servicer settlement announced last month that ended the troubled independent foreclosure review.

A recent court ruling has put CFPB Director Richard Cordray’s job in jeopardy. But who should run the bureau if he has to step down?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is poised for a comprehensive look at the relationships between universities and banks, one that some say is likely to result in new disclosures for debit cards and restrictions on other practices.

The Fed said Tuesday that it terminated a written agreement with Progressive on Feb. 1. The agreement barred Progressive or its $136 million-asset ProGrowth Bank in Nicollet, Minn., from paying dividends or taking on new debt without approval.

The House Financial Services Committee held a dinner meeting Monday night at an Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C.

President Obama's choice to replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary is a lawyer and budget expert. He's also a former Citigroup banker who served as a longtime White House loyalist and is now making the Capitol Hill rounds to bolster his nomination. Yet for all that's known about Jack Lew's past, his views on banking policy remain something of a mystery. One key question is whether as Treasury Secretary he'd support the Financial Stability Oversight Council as vigorously as has his predecessor. In addition to FSOC, at issue are Lew's views on implementing the Dodd-Frank Act, the "Too Big to Fail" doctrine and the designation of non-banks as posing systemic financial risks.

Observers are wondering how focused successor Jack Lew will be to the Financial Stability Oversight Council in comparison to recently departed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

"Small banks received special attention - and critical relief - in the Dodd-Frank Act and proposals tied to Basel III. Both include new minimum capital ratios, but banking companies with less than $500 million of assets are exempt from those requirements," writes American Banker's Andy Peters.

With the price of farmland surging, demand from small farmers for guaranteed mortgages is also way up. Now banks want Congress to raise the cap on those loans.