Politics

Brian Brooks, an acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency during the Trump administration, says the CEO of one of the largest U.S. banks considered barring customers from using its cards to buy firearms.

A long-running conservative push to undercut federal regulatory authority could shake the foundations of U.S. banking law, for better and worse.

Fintech partnerships and new legislation could help make marijuana more viable and less risky for banks.

Between proposed legislation threatening its discretion, a lawsuit challenging its approval process and a bombshell revelation about the only fintech to be awarded one, pressure is mounting on the Fed’s master account policy.

A new study has found that Black and Hispanic borrowers are denied conventional mortgages at higher rates than white applicants and pay up to $2,000 more to refinance.

Sen. Pat Toomey, the top Republican on the Banking Committee, is demanding answers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City about the status of a Fed master account for the Colorado fintech firm Reserve Trust, which had figured in a recent confirmation controversy.

After blocking the Biden administration’s first pick for vice chair for supervision, five Republicans on the committee voted to approve Barr, clearing his path to confirmation. 

The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau want financial institutions to provide more outreach to non-English speakers, a move that could foreshadow multilingual disclosure mandates.

The creation of a U.S. dollar central bank digital currency is an existential threat to the banking industry and needs to be treated as such.

The top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee said he would vote for Michael Barr to serve as the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision. The committee will vote on Barr this afternoon.

Lauded as the first step toward comprehensive regulation of digital assets, the package hits at the heart of a critical debate between banks and fintechs: Who gets a Fed account?

The letter from House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters and Rep. Al Green points to laws passed by some state and local legislatures where financial institutions have been required to disclose whether they had ever profited from slavery in order to operate in their jurisdiction.

The Ohio Democrat and chair of the Senate Banking Committee acknowledged banks’ existing privacy obligations under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act but argued that the 1999 law did not go far enough to address the privacy landscape of 2022.

An American Bankers Association panel of experts predicted much slower economic growth, but agreed that the U.S. economy will avoid a recession over the next couple of years.

CEO Bill Demchak said Thursday that the banking industry has become a "political football," and that lawmakers lack the "backbone" to make broader decisions on climate change and various social issues.

California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation is seeking public comment to provide guidance, regulatory clarity and supervision of crypto financial products and services.

The legislation blocked by John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, would have allowed consumer loans of up to $1,500 with triple-digit interest rates. Edwards wrote that the measure does not protect the public from “predatory lending practices.”

The president invited Jerome Powell to the White House Tuesday and voiced his support of the Federal Reserve’s independence in the fight against inflation. Some see the move as Biden ducking blame for rising prices.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau first completed its rules for payday lenders in 2017, but industry litigation has successfully kept the rule from being enforced.