Financial trade associations weighed in on ways to potentially strengthen regulatory efforts to prevent financial crime through Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering policies ahead of a related hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee. The groups also advocated for the creation of a national beneficial ownership registry to stem the misuse of shell corporations to conduct illegal activities.

With new leadership presiding over the festivities, and doing so on the heels of the release of the association’s new legislative and regulatory agenda, the Independent Community Bankers of America’s (ICBA) 2019 annual conference in Nashville promises to be a newsworthy event for the financial services industry.  Dodd Frank Update will be there, beginning March 18, to chronicle any news and fresh insight shared by event speakers and attendees, as well as interesting sights and sounds always present at one of the industry’s largest conferences.

The final day of the Ellie Mae Experience event in San Francisco kicked off with a conversation with a noted author and a mortgage market update from one of the leading names in the industry. Author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek sat down with Ellie Mae’s Joe Tyrrell, and Mortgage Bankers Association Chief Economist Michael Fratantoni followed with an updated presentation on the market.

For lenders and compliance attorneys preparing to implement procedures necessary to comply with the government-sponsored enterprises’ (GSEs) new Uniform Residential Loan Application (Form 1003), there are bound to be questions that come up along the way. To provide answers, Dodd Frank Update invited DocMagic Chief Compliance Officer Gavin Ales and Garris Horn PLLC Partner Richard Horn to offer straight-forward, comprehensive explanations pertaining to a myriad of common questions about the new requirements in a recent webinar entitled “New Loan Application (URLA): Your Questions Answered.”

The Senate voted to confirm Rodney Hood and Todd Harper to become National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Board members. Hood will take over the board seat vacated by Rick Metsger in August 2017 after his term expired and will serve until August 2023. The seat Harper will fill has been vacant since 2016, when former Chairman Debbie Matz retired. He will serve a term ending in April 2021.

The Department of Labor (DOL) recently proposed to raise the minimum salary for employees to automatically qualify for overtime to a degree much less than its 2016 final rule on the matter. The department’s previous proposal drew criticism from businesses and an injunction from a federal court. 

The House recently passed four bipartisan bills proposing policy changes that would impact bankers and mortgage professionals and certain federal agencies that regulate them. The approved measures are: H.R. 758, the Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act; H.R. 974, the Federal Reserve Supervision Testimony Clarification Act; H.R. 1122, the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Act; and H.R. 1414, the FinCEN Improvement Act.

During her second congressional hearing in the span of a week, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger faced questions from the Senate Banking Committee about her views on data protection, predatory lending in the student loan and payday loan marketplaces and her views on Military Lending Act enforcement and supervision, among other matters. Kraninger fielded several questions about the bureau’s policies on the collection and protection of consumer data, in both the public and private sectors.

Suggesting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could better serve U.S. taxpayers by doing so, Rep. Blaine Luetkeyemer (R-Mo.) urged CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger to dismiss any pending enforcement actions in which consumer harm has not been identified during her recent hearing before the House Financial Services Committee. The fundamental problem with Luetkemeyer’s suggestion, former CFPB attorney and managing partner at Garris Horn PLLC Richard Horn told Dodd Frank Update , is that, as simple as it sounds, the reality of identifying whether consumer harm has occurred is anything but simple for the CFPB.