Legal issues and news

The agency said VyStar customers took on fees and credit report demerits because they could not access banking functions for months following an attempted upgrade.

This month's roundup includes items on TD Bank Group's asset cap and $3 billion in money-laundering fines, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's final rule on open banking and more.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a letter that the Department of Justice intentionally avoided threatening TD Bank's charter to operate. The Massachusetts Democrat also pressed the agency to prosecute bank executives.

A Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year regarding national bank preemption is already playing a prominent role in the banking sector's challenge to a state law on charge card fees.

The megabank disclosed that regulators are looking at its anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance. Wells Fargo was recently hit with an enforcement action over similar matters.

The supposed glitch was simply check fraud. The bank is suing four people who allegedly took as much as $290,000 from the bank as part of the scheme.

The credit card heavyweight said that it expects its acquisition of rival Discover will close in early 2025, pending the approval of shareholders and regulators.

A federal appeals court this year reversed Townstone Financial's earlier victory, ruling the regulator had authority to apply a lending law to prospective applicants.

New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state court for permission to issue subpoenas to Capital One as part of an ongoing antitrust probe by the state,

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra said opposition to the bureau's recently finalized open banking rule should be viewed as banks and other large firms attempting to quash competition and stymie consumer data protection.

The Bank Policy Institute is among the parties that filed a lawsuit late Tuesday to challenge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new open banking rule.

TD Bank's guilty plea to extensive money-laundering charges last week did not include any criminal charges against individual bank executives. That absence has critics fuming, but experts say bringing charges against individuals isn't so easy.

The Bank Policy Institute and The Clearing House filed a motion to join the central bank's defense of Regulation II.

Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said his tenure at the agency could be characterized as simply reading statutes rather than finding novel ways to enforce regulations.

As financial fraud becomes more and more sophisticated, banks need to get proactive about protecting their customers from scammers. This is particularly true of seniors, whose deposits are a key source of banks' core deposits.

For more than a decade, the bank allowed billions of dollars from illicit activities to flow through the U.S. financial system unchecked. Some are wondering why examiners didn't put a stop to it sooner.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Justice issued a consent order against Wisconsin-based nonbank mortgage originator Fairway Independent Mortgage over redlining allegations. Fairway is the country's fifth-largest mortgage originator by volume.

Regulators' asset cap on TD Bank for money-laundering violations has cemented the enforcement tool as a supreme cudgel to rein in problem banks, while other tools devised in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis gather dust.

The Supreme Court ruled this year that companies facing civil money penalties have the right to request a jury trial. The ruling is going to change the way regulators and companies think about enforcement actions.