Search

Mortgage lenders navigating today's rough terrain can make the mistake of not scanning the horizon. Busy with the challenges of market weakness, political and media criticism, a host of new [...]

My husband and I were once charged by an Alaskan grizzly bear. We had been trout fishing among spawning salmon that attracted about 50 bears. We 'managed our risks' by [...]

Monday, 7:38 AM Oh no, I thought. Not again. I was in my boss' office. It was Monday morning, so early the coffee still smelled fresh. 'Something wrong, Pete?' I [...]

EDITOR'S NOTE: The column that follows is a departure from Jo Ann Barefoot's usual essay approach, and it marks the return of Anne Rivers, the fictional bank officer introduced to [...]

Small banks owned by large holding companies must straddle the gap between two philosophies of what the Community Reinvestment Act is about Envision two banks on opposite street corners in [...]

The game has changed. For a quarter century, 'consumer compliance' for banks has been about passing the next exam. Since the 1970s, regulators expected banks to appoint compliance officers, maintain [...]

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) has been revised to shift its focus on performance rather than paperwork. There was widespread agreement that the law's compliance procedures placed excessive emphasis on the requirement for banks to prove that they have taken appropriate measures to comply with CRA. The revised CRA, which took effect on July 1, 1997, simplifies the rules for assessing banking services. It also reduced the regulatory burden of community banks. However, these improvements do not necessary mean that compliance has become easier. In fact, for large banks with major home mortgage programs, the new CRA regulation has created new problems. These include meeting accuracy standards, dealing with data overload and maintaining loan quality.

Dear Campbell County Bank. Thank you for buying my hog. I appreciate your supporting 4-H. I've learned a lot about showing a hog. I learned to look at the judge [...]

You knew it would come to this. Two rushing streams of change -- increased use of credit scoring and evolving fair-lending enforcement policy -- have converged. Furthermore, credit scoring is [...]

Our veteran compliance guide looks back and gleans ten lessons for surviving the 1990s--and beyond This is the fiftieth column I written for ABA Banking Journal. The first was in [...]

'Bankers should discriminate (in pricing), provided the word means to measure and price risk properly with regard to legitimate economic characteristics of the client relationship....But bankers should be prosecuted for [...]

The speed with which use of scoring systems are spreading is breathtaking. Long limited to consumer lending, and especially credit cards, scoring systems have expanded in just the past year [...]

Banking is another industry destined for change,' writes Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in his new book, The Road Ahead. Bankers, however, do not need a warning from Gates to appreciate [...]

In the next few years, the way banks handle compliance will be transformed by technology. The process will attend staffing, risks, costs, and more. Banks need to develop long- and [...]

It's hard to think of a regulation that banks have had to implement amid such uncertainty as the new Community Reinvestment Act. First there were 20 confusing months between the [...]

The strategic-plan option in new Community Reinvestment Act regulation has received much bad press. Many bankers have said on the that they won't use it. Their reasoning is twofold. First, [...]

Pricing issues exert an increasingly central role in banking's fair-lending debate A prediction: pricing will be the key that ultimately either opens or locks the door to more inclusive lending. [...]

The Community Reinvestment Act is in the throes of chaos. At this writing, it is unclear whether or when the regulators will adopt the second proposed regulation to reform CRA. [...]

Since the August release of the fairlending consent decree between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Chevy Chase Federal Savings Bank, bankers and lawyers have been working overtime to figure [...]

Fair lending and CRA compliance have become more numbers-driven Compliance regulation in the areas of credit discrimination and the Community Reinvestment Act is turning into a numbers game. Attorney General [...]

Banks are wrestling with the dilemma of whether to search themselves for possible fair-lending problems and correct them before they become liabilities. Traditionally, banks' auditing on credit discrimination was limited [...]

A look at several state regulatory developments that could prove troublesome The federal government has occupied the regulatory center stage for years, but in recent months a pronounced wave of [...]

A key ingredient in the new regulatory approach to fair lending is the expectation that banks will adopt second-review programs for mortgage applications that fail initial underwriting. For most institutions, [...]

Right about now is when banks put final touches on plans and budgets for the coming year. Unfortunately, many banks' plans don't include sufficient-or any--provision for the compliance challenges they [...]

The banking industry is scaling a steep learning curve with respect to credit discrimination. A year ago, most bankers thought all they had to do to stay out of trouble [...]

In the past I have likened the developing issues in credit discrimination compliance to a gathering storm. Today the storm has broken. Moreover, it shows every sign of being the [...]

Discrimination has moved to the forefront of compliance concerns among regulators and Congress. Urban unrest in Los Angeles spotlighted questions of discrimination and race relations in our country, and redoubled [...]

July 1 nears. Is your CRA program ready? Public disclosure of ratings is only the beginning As the July 1 start date for public disclosure of Community Reinvestment Act ratings [...]

Most bank CEOs today recognize that the risks of noncompliance with consumer laws have been escalating dramatically. For example: * Agency orders for reimbursing customers who received faulty Truth-in-Lending disclosures [...]

By Jo Ann S. Barefoot Consumer protection laws are designed to protect consumers. Business customers are exempt. So commercial loan departments needn't worry about cumbersome compliance, right? Not always. Most [...]

Compliance mailbox Flood insurance used to seem like a routine area, but the risks of regulatory attention and civil litigation have heightened bankers' concerns. That topic leads off this month's [...]

I spent part of the summer before last building thatched livestock sheds in leprosy colonies in southern India--and pondering the transformational power of credit. My 16-year-old daughter and I volunteered [...]

On January 22, the New York Times ran the headline, "Banks Encourage Overdrafts, Reaping Profits." The article, by Alex Berenson, opened with this sentence: "At least 1,000 banks are encouraging […]

Enron, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossings, Tyco, WorldCom. In most of these cases, the courts have yet to determine legal culpability. But public opinion, already convinced that something was terribly amiss, [...]

Science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury said, 'Living at risk is stepping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.' In-flight wing-building is a good analogy for banks' efforts [...]

Lenders trying to keep their sights on the moving target of fair-lending risks need to take in 'disparate impact.' Disparate-impact legal actions are in the works, particularly aiming at the [...]

A public policy book hit the best-seller lists several years ago by advocating that government stop producing micro-management-style regulation and instead leave implementation to common sense. The Death of Common [...]

Most banks' compliance programs were invented in the 1970s in response to a buildup of consumer laws and regulations. They were designed largely by consumer-regulation examiners who took the lead […]

Reporting errors, if ignored, can bring fines. How to avoid six common mistakes With all the emphasis on what the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data mean in relation to fair [...]

Byline: Jo Ann S. Barefoot Here is a common scenario. A bank executive develops a new product, maybe a fee-generation concept. Properly following procedure, he consults the compliance officer, who [...]

The deadline for complying with the Truth in Savings Act (Regulation DD) is right around the comer--June 21--and it is time to tie up loose ends and check that all [...]

Early last year my firm was engaged to conduct research on compliance burdens. Our charge was twofold: (1) To quantify the costs of bank compliance with consumer protection laws; and [...]

I have been a close observer of the Community Reinvestment Act for nearly 15 years. I served on the Senate Banking Committee staff as the idea for CRA went through [...]

With the new year, banks get to turn a fresh page in their Home Mortgage Disclosure Act loan pattern records. The HMDA information that was disclosed a few months ago [...]

The importance of geoanalysis is growing beyond the abilities of a simple map and compass The knottiest clusters of compliance issues facing banks are the ones intended to enable regulators [...]

As the face of America changes, banks will find a whole new set of anti-discrimination challenges-challenges that can be turned into opportunities On May 5, President Bush did something no [...]

Anne Rivers knew the new compliance examiner planned to stick it to the bank. Was there any way for the bank to fight back? And should it? EDITOR'S NOTE: The […]

The problems that plagued the bank in this fable are the exception, but they happen. Sooner or later, many banks face an examiner who tells them they are wrong, when [...]