DOJ’s Operation Choke Point, which encourages financial institutions to scrutinize clients that process payments for certain types of businesses, continues to draw criticism from lawmakers and industry advocates, who argue that the policy is harmful to legitimate, legal businesses.
The social contract between the banking system and society is fundamentally broken. We deserve a financial system that we can all be proud of, one that is fairer and more sustainable than the current iteration.
The European Commission has introduced new rules designed to encourage investment and trigger liquidity – including the use of “high quality” securitisation. The move has been welcomed cautiously by experts, despite the controversial role of securitisation in the financial crisis.
The CFPB is gathering information about the methods banks and credit unions use to screen consumers before approving or denying them a checking account.
Financial market participants have criticised plans for the New York Stock Exchange to begin monitoring itself through its non-profit division, NYSE Regulation, describing the move as a “retrograde step” that will never work in practice. NYSE is currently monitored by FINRA, an independent organisation.
New Jersey legislation (A3480) introduced last June, which would eliminate the need to collect consumer data when purchasing GPR prepaid cards, was advanced last week by the Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee and has been referred to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
While banks want to root out fraudulent activity as much as governments do they “need to take the temperature down”, said Bob Werner, global head of financial crime compliance and group general manager at HSBC. Speaking at a panel session on trends in financial crime compliance, Werner said: “Every time something goes wrong we don’t need the scalp of a regulator or the scalp of a banker.”
The threat of banks de-risking and exiting regions and businesses in fear of sanctions-related fines is upon us, said Juan Zarate, the ex-deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism to US President George W Bush. Zarate was speaking at a Standard Chartered session yesterday morning about his new book, Treasury Wars: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.
Global financial markets are experiencing a paradigm shift as governments, regulators and participants recalibrate the processes and structures underpinning global finance. The challenge is to repair and remedy where needed, with dialogue between central banks, regulators and participants, but also to avoid creating fragmented markets or worse, unintentionally reintroducing risk.
The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the European Union law-making body, has recommended tightening regulations regarding customer authentication and protection of sensitive payment data related to mobile wallets, according to its recently released proposal of the revised Payment Services Directive.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission will hold a public meeting next week to discuss Bitcoin and the CFTC’s jurisdiction regarding derivatives contracts that reference the decentralized digital currency.
A key payments industry group is throwing its support behind tokenization—with a few caveats as to the hurdles that remain before broad industry adoption can occur, including coordinating different tokenization models.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has determined that the CFPB must take additional measures to mitigate risk of “improper collection, use or release of consumer financial data,” according to a recently released report.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its drive to monitor and enforce the financial markets by implementing new surveillance tools to examine and inspect reconciliations. The deal comes as the US regulator charges Barclays with failing to build adequate compliance systems and the bank suffers a fine in the UK.
If you were watching 60 Minutes on Sunday night, your heart probably stopped during the story on “The Tax Refund Scam.”
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Direct Express Debit MasterCard program now serves nearly one-quarter of the nation’s entire unbanked population, a recent cardholder survey confirms.
Did Canada’s Supreme Court just create a significant regulatory issue for the country’s prepaid issuers? According to at least one prominent Canadian attorney who’s following the court’s decisions, it appears quite possible—although more investigation is needed.
Russia’s Central Bank has revoked the licences of three banks as part of an effort to restore trust in the country’s banking system. The move comes as financial messaging network Swift stands defiant against a European Parliament resolution calling for the expulsion of Russia from the community.
Mobile financial services can play an important role among a large group of American consumers. That much the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association, the FTC and consumer organizations, including U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Center for Digital Democracy, agree on.
The European Securities and Markets Authority has set out a series of tough new proposals for how credit rating agencies should be regulated. The proposals have reignited debate over the agencies, which have been controversial for their alleged role in the financial crisis.
Comerica Bank, the incumbent issuer of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Direct Express prepaid debit card program to distribute benefits to Social Security recipients, will continue in that role under a new five-year agreement, according to a blog post published today on the department’s Website.
The European Union’s Court of Justice has ruled that interchange fees charged for cross-border card payments by MasterCard were too high, bringing an end to a seven-year court battle over the fees.
Michael Harte, chief operations and technology officer at Barclays, says the growth of Chinese online e-commerce business Alibaba is the threat that keeps him awake at night – and that major banks could be in danger of losing touch with their own customers.
Home Depot confirmed suspicions that it is the victim of a customer data breach.
The NBPCA responds to the CU report on student cards.
The Financial Conduct Authority has recently issued a series of “considerations” for firms that are thinking about using third-party technology banking solutions. The considerations do not seek to tell firms how to structure their IT procurements but rather provide a useful framework for firms to demonstrate that their IT services are effective, resilient and secure.
Regulators in the US and Europe are stepping up investigations into dark pool activity, market abuse and manipulation of financial benchmarks following a spate of damaging incidents in recent months. Tougher regulatory oversight could have a significant impact on all three areas, according to a new report by financial services technology provider SunGard.
EY is inviting start-up tech companies to compete in a competition looking for solutions to the problems posed by “right to be forgotten” regulations.
The bailout of Espirito Santo Bank brings back unwelcome memories of the events of the last financial crisis and raises the spectre of moral hazard returning to the financial services industry both in the UK and abroad. But how far have we really come since those dark days of 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and how far do we still have to go? A quick look at recent events gives us a good indication.
As demand for Islamic banking services continues to rise, Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt has overhauled its risk management to better handle the unique needs of ethical banking.
The CFPB has finalized its remittance transfer rule requiring remittance transfer providers to disclose certain third-party fees and any exchange rates applicable to the transfer.
India’s central bank now requires all card-not-present transactions for purchases within the country to be routed through a bank in India, with funds settled only in Indian currency.
The merchant groups embroiled in a long-running legal battle over debit interchange fees have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case on the grounds that the Federal Reserve improperly took into account certain costs incurred by card issuers when calculating debit interchange fee limits. However, the retailers have not challenged a separate rule governing the number of unaffiliated debit card networks that must be available for debit and prepaid card transactions, which is good news for card issuers because it gives much longed-for certainty around a challenging issue.
The Consumer Bankers Association is taking umbrage over what it says are vague allegations by the CFPB’s private education loan ombudsman regarding agreements colleges and universities have with financial institutions to provide financial products to students.
In the wake of a flood of interest in a regulatory framework for digital currency companies proposed by New York State’s Department of Financial Services, the DFS has doubled the length of the comment period to 90 days.
The financial services industry has always pursued technical supremacy. But after years of financial crisis and attempted reforms to improve the transparency and understanding of risk exposure in financial services, we seem as much in the dark as ever …
Standard Chartered Bank’s New York business has been ordered to suspend US dollar clearing services to retail clients of the bank in Hong Kong, following an investigation by the New York State Department which determined its transaction monitoring system does not meet anti-money laundering requirements.
A group of merchant associations this week petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review a March decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Deutsche Bank has poached Scott Marcar, previously at RBS, to head up its IT infrastructure as the bank prepares to ramp up competition against its rivals.
ACI, the foreign exchange industry body, has called for the adoption of a new Model Code for sell-side and buy-side firms on financial benchmarks, to harmonise codes of conduct and prevent a recurrence of the Libor and other recent rate fixing scandals.
