Legal issues and news

Security Group was fined $5 million for abusive collection tactics; the Dutch payments company is now valued at nearly $16 billion.

In his inaugural hearing as comptroller of the currency, Joseph Otting defended his decision not to publicly rebuke banks for Wells Fargo-like problems.

The House Financial Services Committee is preparing to vote on legislation to modernize anti-money-laundering rules, but the latest version of the bill excludes a key provision involving the collection of beneficial ownership information.

Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney had sided with two industry trade groups that sued the CFPB in April to invalidate the tough restrictions.

Republican congressmen Blaine Luetkemeyer and Steve Pearce say their new legislation would update anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism requirements for small financial institutions.

Wong was placed on administrative leave in February and arrested in May in connection with alleged embezzlement and fraud at the credi tunion.

Legislation with bipartisan support would raise the threshold for reporting suspicious activity, a goal banks have long sought.

USAA's lawsuit accusing Wells of infringing on its remote-deposit patents is new territory: bank-on-bank fights over intellectual property.

When asked if other banks were being sued, USAA said the lawsuit names only Wells Fargo because the bank is one of the biggest adopters of remote mobile deposit capture and has failed to license the technology.

Financial institutions can improve monitoring of suspicious activity and potentially risky customers using algorithms, but they need to treat this new technology with caution.

Institutions that have been opening consumer accounts without consent need to prepare for the fallout, even if the OCC has said it won't name names.

The agency found no “systemic issues” in its review of other banks’ sales practices; some churches say the lenders are needed, others see the devil.

Only the collective efforts of cardholders, issuers, merchants and acquirers will significantly impact payment fraud, writes Stephanie Ericksen, vice president of identity and risk products for Visa.

That’s the question executives of publicly traded banks are asking themselves as they try to make sense of new — and somewhat vague — guidance from the SEC on procedures for disclosing data breaches.

Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney wrote in a two-paragraph filing that the Mount Laurel, N.J., company did not violate the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.

Agency says it wants “smaller memberships to ensure streamlined discussions;” the bank hired a U.K. firm to help it better defend against cyberattacks.

There is a growing fraud problem encompassing much more than the direct value of lost merchandise. There is also manual order review, opportunity costs from false positives and the massive overhead of implementing fraud-fighting best practices, writes Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt.

The agency has no plans to release general findings from an extensive review of sales practices at large and midsized banks. That's troublesome, and will only fuel the perception that it is too cozy with the institutions it regulates.

The OCC finds widespread problems in bank retail sales practices; Ripple and Swift competition for payments pits technology against convention.

An inquiry into the sales practices of more than 40 banks launched in the wake of the Wells scandal found several systemic issues and hundreds of problems at individual institutions. The OCC completed the review in December but is not making the results public.