Banking

Not unlike her first stint in the congressional hot seat as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Kathy Kraninger addressed changes to the bureau’s approach to enforcement and fulfilling its statutory mission during her second semi-annual report to Congress.

Multiple congressional representatives, including a former enforcement officer, picked apart Kraninger’s method for determining appropriate amounts for fines and restitution included in settlement agreements.

Learn what insights came out of the hearings. 

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently announced that it will push back the compliance date for its current expected credit loss (CECL) standard again for most lenders.

Specifically, the delay would apply to small reporting companies (as defined by the SEC), non-SEC public companies and private companies.

Find out more details about the delay and a new interagency policy statement on CECL changes.

Saying that Congress is “long overdue” to work together on legislation to prevent money laundering and counter terrorism financing, a group of financial services trade associations wrote House leaders in support of two bills expected to get votes this week.

The bills would create a national database that banks could use to verify a business’s beneficial ownership information and modernize the existing Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)/Anti-Money Laundering (AML) framework by enhancing bank-law enforcement communications.

Read on for more details of the associations’ outreach.

Financial industry advocates noted their concerns about draft legislation on third-party vendor authority with regard to third-party cloud storage providers in letters to House leaders.

The draft legislation proposes to amend the Bank Service Company Act to cover vendors of credit unions and entities supervised by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to the same extent as it covers banks and savings associations.

Find out what financial trade associations had to say about the proposed measure.

As the constitutionality question looms seemingly larger than ever over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), financial industry advocates largely have maintained their long-held contention that the best remedy for the bureau’s controversial leadership structure is to reform it as a bipartisan commission.

The Consumer Bankers Association noted that such a structure was proposed in the original version of Dodd-Frank that passed the House with bipartisan support in 2010.

Find out what specific points the trade organization cited.

The increasing popularity of alternative and innovative means for verifying mortgage borrowers’ ability to repay their loans has caused financial entities and regulators to reevaluate rules and statutes implemented to protect those same borrowers from the types of predatory lending that contributed to the financial crisis.

Many reason that some of the safeguards put in place by the Dodd-Frank Act and federal regulators are too restrictive and offered various suggestions for addressing that issue.

Find out more details about stakeholder suggestions.

Legislation recently was introduced in the Senate as part of a package of eight bills geared toward making college more accessible to underserved and minority communities.

The Consumer Bankers Association (CBA) expressed its support for the measure, noting that it wishes to see future legislative action regarding federal student loan disclosures.

Read on to learn more about the bill.

Two new executive orders issued by President Donald Trump’s administration stipulate that guidance documents will be absent any force or effect of the law – a determination prudential regulators decreed one year earlier. The directives also add an extra step to the civil investigative process for federal agencies.

The directives, aimed at improving policies on federal guidance documents and civil administrative enforcement and adjudication proceedings, shine a light on the legal quandary surrounding guidance, which Dodd Frank Update previously explored in-depth.

Learn more details about the directives and the uncertainties surrounding guidance.

The Federal Reserve recently finalized rules establishing a tailored framework for regulations applying to domestic and foreign banks.

The rules are designed to more closely match institutions’ risk profiles, reducing compliance requirements for firms with less risk while maintaining the most stringent requirements for the largest and most complex institutions.

Get more details about the implications of the newly finalized rules.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a final rule to dramatically increase the threshold for national banks and federal savings associations to be covered by the OCC’s Dodd-Frank Act stress testing.

The agency considered recommendations pertaining to the testing requirements and the frequency with which the tests are conducted.

Read on for more information about the rule, which aligns with financial reform legislation passes last year.