Buried in the Corker-Warner reform bill are two provisions that would give the Federal Home Loan banks an opportunity to play a major role in the new housing finance system.
Regulators are challenging banks relationships with disfavored businesses, citing the endlessly adaptable concept of reputation risk rather than law or regulation.
Show me an industry with artificially high barriers to entry, and you will almost certainly find dissatisfied customers paying higher prices to large, protected providers.
Provide them with a basic understanding of the banking system, share your firms strategic vision and encourage communication between departments and affiliates.
Contradictory regulations, such as the CFPBs QM standards and HUDs new fair lending rules, inhibit banks ability to devote resources to their businesses.
Even great bankers cannot succeed when forced to compete in a market with an influx of new banks and a shortage of skilled bankers, wise directors, and experienced regulators.
Bankers and regulators may need to study the barriers of entry into banking just as seriously as the NFL and Major League Baseball consider new franchises for football and baseball.
The Feds research raises more questions than it answers, among them: Is the researcher right when he says the great bankers he interviewed could run a bank successfully anywhere, anytime?
American Banker Magazine's recent article on the Small Business Administration's Karen Mills was quite a love-fest. Here's the other side of the story that would be good for the public to hear.
