Title II

In what would be the largest bank merger by asset and deposit volume since the financial crisis, SunTrust Banks, Inc. and BB&T Corp. recently announced they’d agreed to a $66 billion deal that would combine both companies to form the sixth-largest bank by asset size in the country.

The merger was announced two days after the Federal Reserve informed both banks they would not be required to comply with certain stress testing requirements, invoking its ability to do so for banks with less than $250 billion in assets under S. 2155.

Find out more details about the deal and what congressional hurdles could slow the closing process.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is considering policy changes to streamline and strengthen the resolution planning process for large banks, as well as changes to its Orderly Liquidation Authority.

The agency also is considering changes to thresholds associated with its insured depository institutions (IDIs) rule and will not require banks to file IDI plans until its rule revisions are finalized.

Learn what Chairman Jelena McWilliams believes should be guiding principles behind any potential rule changes.

An online student loan provider’s recent decision to withdraw its bid to become a chartered industrial loan company (ILC) represents the third instance of such a retraction by a fintech in a little more than a year.

Nelnet Inc., an online student loan servicer, released a statement indicating that the company may consider reapplying for an ILC charter with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions in the future.

Find out why the Independent Community Bankers of America stands opposed to such charters.

For the second straight quarter, banks enjoyed record profits, as reported by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in its Quarterly Banking Profile.

The latest report indicated that FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions saw more than $60 billion in aggregate profits in the second quarter of 2018, a 25.1 percent increase from the previous year. The FDIC attributed the profit gains to higher net interest income and the lower effective tax rate instituted by the new tax law enacted in 2017 by President Donald Trump.

Find out more details about the record-setting quarter.

The federal banking agencies have issued interim final rules expanding the 18-month on-site examination cycle to cover more insured depository institutions, U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks.

The expansion is authorized by the recently enacted the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

Find out specifics about what institutions will be impacted by the new interim rules.

The third fintech company to vie for a bank charter with both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and Utah regulators in little more than a year also recently became the third to encounter expressed opposition from community bankers.

Weeks after Nelnet, a Nebraska-based student lender, made its bid to form a Utah-chartered industrial loan corporation (ILC), the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) urged the FDIC to deny the company’s request and impose a two-year moratorium on future ILC applications, as it did in response to SoFi’s application in June 2017 and Square’s that September.

Find out more details about why ICBA opposes ILC charters. 

Among the 32 legislative pieces comprising a substitute amendment to the bipartisan JOBS and Investor Confidence Act, also known as S. 488 and the JOBS Act 3.0, are provisions affecting the regulatory climate in ways that would be beneficial to financial markets, and help small businesses retain capital required to grow.

Those provisions first were introduced in bills H.R. 4292, the Financial Institution Living Will Improvement Act of 2017, and H.R. 4566, the Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act (Sections 2 and 3).

Find out what Dodd-Frank changes those measures propose and what other provisions are included in the package.

All 35 participating bank holding companies passed the eighth round of Federal Reserve Board stress tests since 2009, the sixth to date required by the Dodd-Frank Act.

The results showed the participating firms to be well-capitalized despite negative effects of rising credit card balances and the loss of beneficial tax treatments under the Republican tax reform law enacted in December 2017.

Find out more details about the latest stress test results.

Bringing together professionals from all spokes of the real estate industry in one location always has been the focus of the National Settlement Services Summit (NS3).

For the 2018 installment, keynote speaker Alessandro DiNello, president and CEO of Flagstar Bank, brought to the podium the perspective of an industry leader who has worn a number of different hats throughout his career.

From a regulatory perspective to technology and all points in between, find out how DiNello and his company successfully navigated a gauntlet of obstacles and are now thriving. 

The agencies comprising the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council have replaced their 21-year-old revised policy statement on “Interagency Coordination of Formal Corrective Action by the Federal Bank Regulatory Agencies” with a new one designed to ensure ongoing coordination between the banking regulators. 

Concurrently, the agencies announced that the revised policy statement covering interagency coordination dated Feb. 20, 1997 has been rescinded.

Read on to learn what this means for enforcement proceedings and more.