Compliance & Regulation

It is essential to place the central focus on race, to bring nondepository mortgage lenders under the Community Reinvestment Act umbrella and to address bias in home appraisals.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell brushed off concerns that rapidly tightening monetary policy could disrupt the financial system. Some economists and policy experts beg to differ, raising concerns about loan defaults or even the collapse of a key institution or counterparty.

The Justice Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three state attorneys general alleged that Trident Mortgage, a lender owned by Berkshire Hathaway, engaged in redlining and discrimination in the Philadelphia area.

The credit reporting agency is trying to get a CFPB lawsuit dismissed by claiming the consumer bureau didn’t sign off on a 2017 consent order for the same violations.

Led by Rep. French Hill, the group of conservative lawmakers said the agency must do more to ensure appropriate transparency regarding any new products or activities that the enterprises undertake.

Agencies supervising lenders should make it clear that the transition to less discriminatory algorithms won’t be used to punish banks for their previous use of older, less effective systems.

The two megabanks said that their capital requirements will rise in the wake of Federal Reserve stress tests, putting downward pressure on their distributions to shareholders. Meanwhile, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and others announced plans to raise their dividends.

The accord resolves a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alleging that the algorithms used in Meta’s advertising systems allowed marketers to violate fair housing laws by limiting or blocking certain groups of people from seeing housing ads on the service. 

The CRA has failed to reduce anti-Black racial discrimination in financial services, to lower poverty or to lessen environmental destruction.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency also noted limits to its authority in efforts to free the government-sponsored enterprises from conservatorship in its report to Congress.