News Topic: law-regulation

The CFPB's complaint portal will only be helpful to consumers if the agency takes the time to verify or contextualize their concerns. ... Read full article

An employee's careless Tweet or Facebook status update can pose big risks to financial firms, but social media is still a necessary tool for engaging with younger customers. ... Read full article

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the best way to instill ethical culture and what the U.S. can learn from foreign countries' efforts to reach the unbanked. ... Read full article

The CFPB wants to expand banks' data reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. But this would impose even greater costs upon local financial institutions that are already overburdened by regulation. ... Read full article

When financial firms emphasize the need to put customers first, they offer employees a simple way to navigate daily dilemmas while short-circuiting self-interest and tribal behavior. ... Read full article

The smaller banks in the FDIC's deposit insurance fund are subsidizing the activities of the largest banks. A two-tiered approach would go a long way toward addressing moral hazard and the too big to fail problem. ... Read full article

A new book by the American Enterprise Institute's Peter Wallison reveals how a government push to lower credit standards brought about the housing crisis Â-- and why a new effort to expand homeownership could inadvertently set the stage for a fresh ... Read full article

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the benefits of regulating banks by complexity rather than size and how to make the Fed's stress tests more effective. ... Read full article

Informing banks about the details of stress-test requirements in advance would help mitigate financial institutions' unnecessary costs. And conducting the tests on a quarterly basis would ensure that banks are unable to game the system. ... Read full article

Small-business lending will be crucial to the future of the American economy. But community banks' ability to make loans to friends and neighbors they know depends in part on a supportive regulatory environment. ... Read full article

Policymakers should stop assuming that homeownership is always better than renting and recognize the economic circumstances that young people will live with for the foreseeable future. ... Read full article

The Subsidy Reserve Act would bring into the open the financial benefits of being TBTF Â-- benefits the big banks claim to be nonexistent. ... Read full article

Tiered regulation could bring about a number of useful changes for regional banks, including a more customized approach to determining capital adequacy and simplified resolution planning requirements. ... Read full article

When regulators use asset size as a yardstick, they impose unnecessary rules on larger financial institutions that employ traditional banking models. ... Read full article

Banks have spent a lot of money in order to comply with stress-test requirements. But they will only realize the value on their investments if they integrate stress-test tools and results into their daily decision-making process. ... Read full article

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including the downside of public banking and the vulnerabilities unaddressed by global regulators' bail-in plan for megabanks. ... Read full article

The Financial Stability BoardÂ's proposed capital and long-term debt requirements would only go part of the way toward ending the risk of government bailouts. If regulators really want to get rid of too big to fail, they need to deal with ... Read full article

Lawmakers reluctant to offer community banks regulatory relief should consider the empirical evidence of how Dodd-Frank has hurt small lenders Â-- and listen to the federal and state bank regulators calling for changes. ... Read full article