Regulatory reform

Housing regulators should not adopt an alternative credit scoring model until the banking industry is on board.

Of the more than 30 GOP lawmakers due to retire at yearend — a historically significant level of departures for a single election — several are important to banking policy.

House Republicans are exiting Congress in droves ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and the stakes for the financial services industry could be significant.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected to consider the nominations of Jelena McWilliams to be FDIC chair and Marvin Goodfriend as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

Cryptocurrencies continue to dominate much of the news, with a warning on bitcoin taking the top spot and a story about Ripple's partnership with MoneyGram doing well. Housing finance reform, Wells Fargo and the CFPB also featured.

The House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on five bills, three of which are included in the deal negotiated between Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and moderate Democrats.

The Senate Banking Committee will have two additional members in 2018: Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Doug Jones, D-Ala.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected soon to release a bipartisan bill that would significantly reshape the housing finance market, but key issues remain unresolved.

The banking industry braced for big changes with the election of President Trump, but the financial reform law has proven its staying power over the past year.

The Senate Banking Committee's first hearing of 2018 will focus on anti-money-laundering efforts and counter terrorist financing, which could be a precursor to legislative reforms.

The announcement Tuesday by Sen. Orrin Hatch that he will retire at the end of the year could have a ripple effect throughout the Senate, including the leadership of the Banking Committee.

If acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney ultimately prevails in the lawsuit challenging his position, he is expected to continue implementing the most significant changes to the agency in its six-year history.

Over the past year, the focus of several banking policymakers has been how much the regulatory pendulum might swing back toward the industry’s liking. That theme will likely continue in 2018.

A regulatory relief package is likely to come out of the Senate in the new year, and lawmakers could follow it up with a housing finance reform push. But the midterm elections could cause some reform initiatives to grind to a halt.

From the identity of bankers in the 21st century to the regulatory turmoil in Washington to the huge impact of technology on the industry, readers expressed an array of strong opinions about what happened in 2017.

Legislation advanced by the Senate banking panel has a good shot at passage, as long as lawmakers remain focused on helping community banks — not Wall Street.

Banking regulatory agencies Thursday announced that they would raise the aggregate loan commitment threshold for syndicated loans to be included in the Shared National Credit program from $20 million to $100 million.

The announcement Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt agreed to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each build a $3 billion capital buffer avoided a potential crisis.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be allowed to build capital buffers to protect against losses under an agreement between the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced on Thursday.

Despite increasing bipartisan support to remove asset cutoffs for "systemically important financial institutions," Congress will likely settle for an asset threshold increase.