Bank Notes

  • June 29, 2016
    On June 29, 2016, Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Dean Heller (R-NV), Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced the Senate companion to the Empowering Students Through Enhanced Financial Counseling Act (H.R. 3179). The House bill was recently reported out of the House Education and Workforce Committee by voice vote. The legislation would increase the borrower counseling required prior to...
  • June 29, 2016
    On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) unanimously voted to rescind GE Capital’s designation as a systemically important financial institution (SIFI). In its decision , FSOC explains, “GE Capital has fundamentally changed its business. Through a series of divestitures, a transformation of its funding model, and a corporate organization, the company has become a...
  • June 29, 2016
    On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, CFPB Director Richard Cordray spoke at the White House Financial Literacy and Education Commission meeting and discussed the Bureau’s partnerships with social service providers, community groups, legal aid clinics, libraries, and state and local policymakers. Specifically, he highlighted the “Your Money, Your Goals” initiative and “Managing Someone Else’s Money”...
  • June 29, 2016
    On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, the FDIC issued an interim final rule and request for comment concerning amending its practice and procedure rules to adjust the maximum civil money penalty to account for inflation. This action is required by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015. The interim rule takes effect on August 1, 2016, and comments are due by...
  • June 29, 2016
    On Wednesday, June 29, 2016, the CFPB and U.S. Department of Justice announced a joint action against BancorpSouth Bank for alleged discriminatory mortgage lending practices. These accusations include, illegal redlining in Memphis; denying mortgage loans applications of certain African-Americans more often than non-Hispanic whites; charging African-Americans more for certain mortgage loans than...
  • June 28, 2016
    On Tuesday, June, 28, 2016, the CFPB released its Monthly Complaint Snapshot for June 2016, where the “Product Spotlight” was on consumer loans with a new “Subproduct Spotlight” feature on auto lending. To date, the CFPB has handled over 900,000 complaints. However, this number includes a large amount of submissions directed to other agencies. Consumer loan complaints represented four percent of...
  • June 28, 2016
    On Tuesday, June 28, 2016, the FDIC announced a forthcoming small business survey. The survey will go to 2,000 banks in late June and seeks to gain information on “many aspects of small business lending, including nationally representative information on the general characteristics of banks’ small business borrowers, the types of credit offered to small businesses, and the relative importance of...
  • June 28, 2016
    On Tuesday, June 28, 2016, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) wrote a letter to Wal-Mart, Green Dot and MasterCard regarding a recent outage preventing Wal-Mart MoneyCard users from being able to access their funds. Specifically, the Senators requested the companies’ chief executives provide a timeline of the interruptions with explanations detailing how the problem happened,...
  • June 27, 2016
    On Monday, June 27, 2016, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report on the CFPB’s controls on employee credit card expenses. In the report , titled: “The CFPB Should Continue to Enhance Controls for its Government Travel Card [GTC] Program,” the OIG found the Bureau lacked controls to “prevent or identify unauthorized use of GTCs and provide reasonable assurance that cards are...
  • June 27, 2016
    On Monday, June 27, 2016, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to review the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in Madden v. Midland Funding . This class action case alleges Midland Funding, a debt buyer, violated state usury laws and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) when it attempted to collect on debt it had purchased from FIA Card Services, N.A. In a controversial decision...

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