Federally regulated financial institutions must accept private flood insurance on loans secured by properties in special flood hazard areas, according to a partially approved inter-agency final rule.

The New York Department of Financial Services last week rejected Fidelity National Financial’s application to acquire control of Stewart Information Services’ NY-based title insurance company.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, last week said it will no longer defend its single-director leadership structure.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau needs a systematic process to prioritize consumer risks and focus its resources to address them, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.

Lenders are not liable for a servicer’s failure to comply with the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, according to a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Such claims by borrowers have seen some success in district courts and this was the first time an appeals court considered the issue.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.GSE anti-money laundering, SARs reporting proposed. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed regulations that would require Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks to develop anti-money laundering programs and file suspicious activity reports with FinCEN. The government-sponsored enterprises currently file fraud reports with their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which then files SARs with FinCEN when the facts in a particular fraud report warrant a SAR under FinCEN’s reporting standards.

A white paper put together by a researcher at the Federal Reserve looks into what determines whether federal and state supervisors examine state banks independently or together. The results suggest that supervisors coordinate examinations in order to support states with lower budgets and capabilities and more banks to supervise. “I find that states with larger budgets examine more banks independently, that they accommodate changes in the number of banks mostly through the number of examinations with a federal supervisor and that, when examining banks together, state banking departments that have earned quality accreditation are more likely to write conclusion reports separately from federal supervisors,” researcher Marcelo Rezende said. The results also indicate that regulation affects supervision by changing the characteristics of banks. “Independent examinations decrease with branch deregulation, which is consistent with the facts that this reform consolidated banks within fewer independent firms and that state and federal supervisors are more likely to examine large and complex institutions together,” said Rezende.

The European debt crisis, following not far behind the global financial market meltdown of a few years ago, has put more pressure on the covered bond market, but analysts at the ABS East conference sponsored by Information Management Network said the sector is holding up well and gaining more acceptance in other countries. Covered bonds have not been completely unscathed, said Michael Durrer, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP. But Canada is starting up a covered bond market, Australia has recently enacted legislation, New Zealand has seen its first transactions and Belgium – the last European...

President Obama has announced Carol Galante as his pick for Assistant Secretary for Housing and FHA Commissioner at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Galante has occupied the two posts in an acting capacity since July 12, when she replaced Robert Ryan. Ryan temporarily assumed both jobs after former HUD Assistant Secretary for Housing and FHA Commissioner David Stevens left HUD at the end of March 2011 to join the Mortgage Bankers Association as its new president and CEO. Prior to her current post, Galante served as HUD deputy assistant secretary for multifamily programs. In addition, Galante, a licensed real estate broker, has been a leader of major administration initiatives, including ...