The promise of automation and self-service capabilities will become reality over the next three years, Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan told team members in a companywide town hall meeting, and that is expected to lead to fewer employees at the company.  Sloan told staff in the bi-monthly town hall that the company expects to see a decline in headcount of 5 to 10 percent within the next three years as customer preferences change.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked into the effects of financial regulation on small-business lending by community banks.  However, the data being supplied to regulators does not accurately capture community banks’ lending to small businesses, GAO found, limiting regulators’ ability to properly assess the availability of credit to small businesses.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is being sued over its recent decision to begin accepting non-bank charter applications from fintech companies. The lawsuit is the second brought by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) regarding the OCC’s stance on fintech charters and coincides with the renewal of a similar legal challenge previously brought by a coalition of state bank regulators.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s freshly minted Office of Innovation has a proposed a rule to establish a Disclosure Sandbox designed to encourage companies to engage in trial programs to improve compliance with the bureau’s existing disclosure policies.  The proposal could highlight the bureau’s stated intent to work on increasing coordination with federal and state regulators. Industry advocacy groups have called for an extension to the comment period connected to the proposal. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 17th edition of Supervisory Highlights details trends the bureau’s examiners observed at covered banks, credit unions and certain nonbanks pertaining to debt collection, mortgage servicing, payday lending, auto loan servicing, credit card account management and small business lending from December 2017 to May 2018. The latest edition is absent some noteworthy portions that have been staples of past reports, such as information about mortgage origination examinations and non-public enforcement activity. 

Alleging that they deceived consumers about the nature of certain pension-related product offerings, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit citing multiple parties for violating two consumer financial protection laws. The bureau accused the defendants of giving consumers the erroneous impression that their pension-advance products were not loans, as well as other illegal conduct.

Recognizing the negative impacts of Hurricane Florence on customers, members and business operations at covered financial institutions, the federal prudential regulatory agencies and state regulators announced their intent to provide appropriate regulatory assistance to supervised entities affected by the storm. The agencies released a statement encouraging institutions operating in the affected areas to strive to continue meeting the financial services needs of their communities.

In a move intended to better distinguish between guidance and regulation, the federal prudential regulators collectively released a clarifying statement regarding the role of guidance. The financial industry and other interested parties believe the move is a positive step given the fact that past guidance issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Richard Cordray’s leadership was deemed to have the same force and effect of a law.

Determining that its market activities did not pose significant systemic economic risk, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) announced that Zions Bank will not be treated as a designated nonbank financial company upon completion of its merger with Zions Bancorporation. In its final decision, FSOC noted arguments Zions stressed in a written submission advocating for the regulators not to subject the company to enhanced regulatory scrutiny reserved for large nonbank financial institutions, and argued that any two entities could structure a merger that subverted Section 117 of the Dodd-Frank Act.