The American Bankers Association is voicing concerns that the CFPB – not depository institutions – should pay the steep cost of gathering information as part of its expansive rulemaking on overdraft protection services. In a recent memo to state banking associations, the ABA noted that back in November, the CFPB ordered three financial services core processors – Fiserv, FIS Global, and Jack Henry – to provide significant amounts of information and anonymized data about the overdraft program services each processor provides to depository institutions and the configurations of those services.“Fiserv has informed its clients that it is ‘tracking [its] costs carefully with the likelihood that these will be passed through to [its] clients on [its] hosted bank platforms,’” the memo stated. The other ...

The banks with the highest percentage of overdraft fees to pretax operating income stand to lose over 8 percent of total pretax revenue if half of their overdraft fee revenue went away as a result of the rules the CFPB is set to release later this year, according to analysts at FBR Capital. The banks most exposed are TCF Financial, First Citizens BancShares, International Bancshares and Regions Financial, according to the FBR analysts. “Any CFPB rule on overdraft will likely mirror recent draft rules on prepaid cards that will require an assessment of the consumer’s ability to repay, have a repayment plan, and prohibit using deposits to repay the overdraft and associated fees,” the FBR team said. They noted that ...

A handful of industry trade groups urged the CFPB to solicit public comment on its arbitration study before it considers rulemaking on the subject. The groups, which have made similar requests in personal meetings with CFPB officials, said a formal comment period is essential to ensure transparency and to obtain thorough feedback on the 729-page report from all interested parties. “It is impossible for anyone – regardless of point of view – to provide anything other than generalized reactions regarding the study during the one- to two-hour roundtable sessions that the bureau has convened to obtain comment, particularly because these sessions seek input from multiple parties at the same time,” said the trade groups. As they see it, written comments are the ...

Financial institutions demonstrated a big improvement in the way they handled money transfers in the first quarter. The same could not be said for the money-transfer specialists. The performance of these companies was noticeably more uneven in the period ending March 31, 2015, according to the latest Inside the CFPB review of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database. Among the big three money-transfer companies – Western Union, MoneyGram and PayPal – Western Union did the best, seeing zero change from the fourth quarter of last year and an 18.8 percent drop year over year. MoneyGram did the worst of the three, with complaints up 72.9 percent from the fourth quarter and up 53.7 percent from a year ago. PayPal saw a 7.3 percent ...

Industry Groups Urge Restructuring of CFPB. Wading into risky political territory, a number of industry groups last week urged Congress to support H.R. 1266, legislation that would revamp the governing structure of the CFPB. Submitting a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, the industry groups said consumers and the industry would be better served by changing the CFPB governance structure from a single director to a bipartisan five-person commission as used by other federal agencies. “The CFPB has tremendous authority to supervise a multi-trillion dollar industry, which as we have learned, can have incredible ramifications on our economy,” the statement said. “As such, it is imperative the CFPB remain stable ...

But the combined Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act disclosures may not be as bad as many seem to fear.

The changes allow eligible non-borrowing spouses with older Home-Equity Conversion Mortgages the potential to remain in their home following the death of the last surviving HECM borrower.

Lenders provided a few constructive suggestions while voicing frustration regarding state regulators’ data collection efforts.

Following a four-month trial and nine days of deliberations, a New York jury acquitted Abacus and two of its senior officers...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency needs to be more forthright about its plans to expand the credit-risk transfer activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. In a letter sent to FHFA Director Mel Watt this week, the six senators said the agency’s public guidance on the program “lacks specificity, metrics and long-term direction.” Watt and other FHFA officials have talked about risk transfers by the two government-sponsored enterprises, but most of the description of the program is somewhat vaguely outlined in the agency’s strategic plan and the so-called 2015 scorecard. The bipartisan group, which includes Sens. Mark Warner, D-VA, and Mike Crapo, R-ID, urged...