Regulatory reform

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.

This year has been very good to regional banks, bitcoin investors and several bank CEOs who pulled off big deals or successfully refined business models.

The government-sponsored enterprises are at the heart of our housing finance problems, not the solutions.

For decades, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped working-class Americans get mortgages. That essential and powerful role in the national economy is fading.

Readers chime in on the GOP’s inheriting vast regulatory powers, the continuing back and forth over who leads the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the root causes of cryptocurrency hacks, and more.

The Trump administration's first interagency assessment of systemic risk highlighted many of the same worries as previous reports, but added a new emphasis on economic growth and regulatory tailoring.

The 2010 law does very little to constrain regulatory power, explaining why Republicans pushed for reforms during the Obama presidency and why, under President Trump, Democrats are so vigorously opposing agency management changes.

Despite concerns from Democrats about the bank regulatory views of Federal Reserve Board officials who will lead the central bank going forward, the current Fed chair said she is not worried.

The House Financial Services Committee passed 13 bills (and scrapped a vote on one) Wednesday, including one that would stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from being released by the government and another hailed as helping the underbanked in rural areas.

House and Senate bills contain a provision that would let financial firms in all states use digital scans of photo IDs to verify identities of prospective customers. That could ease the account-opening process for consumers in areas where branches are few and far between.

House and Senate bills contain a provision that would let financial firms in all states use digital scans of photo IDs to verify identities of prospective customers. That could ease the account-opening process for consumers in areas where branches are few and far between.