In this month's roundup of top banking news: a Supreme Court ruling on CFPB funding, TD Bank's money laundering woes, an FDIC workplace probe reveals a culture of misconduct and more.
Supreme Court upholds CFPB's funding in 7-2 decision
For most federal agencies, Congress provides funding on an annual basis, which forces the agencies to ask Congress for renewed funding every year.
"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is different," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority. "In this case, we must decide the narrow question whether this funding mechanism complies with the Appropriations Clause. We hold that it does."
Rohit Chopra, the CFPB's director, responded by saying the Supreme Court had "repudiated the arguments of the payday loan lobby."
'Tougher before it gets better': TD faces a long road on AML woes
Although TD hasn't laid out specifics, the
"Simply put, our anti-money laundering program did not deliver," TD CEO Bharat Masrani wrote in a May 7 memo to employees. "We did not meet our expectations or our regulatory obligations to monitor, detect, report and respond to suspicious activity. As a result, criminals broke through our defenses and used the bank to launder money."
FIS says it is once again putting banks first
"We lost our focus on serving our banking clients," Stephanie Ferris, who
The turnaround has occupied the first year of Ferris' time as CEO, starting when she
FirstBank hired hackers to breach its systems. It took them three years.
In one case, Brenden Smith, the chief information security officer of FirstBank, said during a panel at the cybersecurity-focused RSA Conference, the hackers made an initial breach into FirstBank's systems that took 102 days for his team to detect.
"The good news," Smith said, "is that they didn't accomplish any of their objectives."
Why some banks have decided now is the time to sell their Visa shares
Those banks saw the value of their bonds tank when interest rates rose, causing losses that were previously "unrealized" but become very much real once the bonds are sold. The decision to get rid of the bonds can be painful because it lowers the banks' capital levels, giving them a smaller cushion to handle potential economic turmoil.
The sales are one example of banks coming up with "creative ways to fill the hole created by selling underwater securities," Paul Davis, a consultant and founder of
Two thefts decades apart, and a victim's quest for answers
"The money was stolen by the Nazis first. And
FDIC workplace probe outlines pervasive culture of misconduct
"Far too many FDIC employees — substantially more than those who have previously reported internally — have suffered from sexual harassment, discrimination, and other forms of interpersonal misconduct for far too long," the report noted. "We find that aspects of the FDIC's culture and structure — including a lack of accountability, fear of retaliation, a patriarchal, hierarchic, insular and risk-averse culture, power imbalances, insufficiently clear guidance and reporting channels, inadequate recordkeeping, and an investigative process that lacks credibility internally — have contributed as root causes to the conditions that have allowed for this type of workplace misconduct to occur."
Over a span of five months, investigators took testimony from more than 500 individuals, primarily current FDIC employees. The firm also conducted interviews with another 167 individuals and meticulously reviewed thousands of related documents uncovering hundreds of instances of misconduct, some occurring as recently as weeks before the report's publication.
Small banks 'feel like hostages' to their core systems: OCC's Hsu
"In every single discussion I've had about banks, digital, and modernization, especially with community banks, all roads lead through the core," Michael Hsu, Acting Comptroller of the Currency, said in a fireside chat hosted by the AIR. "I've heard a lot of frustration from community banks because they feel like hostages in these relationships and have no negotiating leverage."
At stake is the ability for financial institutions focused squarely on under-resourced communities to be competitive and serve their audiences effectively.
NYCB lays out revised strategy while warning of more near-term pain
Borrowers have so far shown "amazing resiliency," new CEO Joseph Otting, a former top bank regulator, told analysts during the company's first-quarter earnings call. Still, net charge-offs were $81 million during the quarter, while the provision for loan losses totaled $315 million — far above where both metrics were a year earlier. Nonperforming loans also skyrocketed year over year, totaling $798 million as of March 31.
Analysts say there are still a lot of unknowns. One big question: How will New York Community, which has
'Like wildfire': Rising check fraud pits small banks against big banks
"Check fraud is out of hand," Chris Doyle, president and CEO of the $2.2 billion-asset Texas First Bank said recently. "It's an all-out war and we have people fighting it every day at our bank. The capture and washing of checks is out of control. There's no security around checks. It's too easy to wash them and commit fraud."
Community banks are laying the blame for check fraud mostly on seven large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, for not doing enough to police new account openings. Checks are intercepted by criminals through the mail, altered by check washing, and then deposited in so-called drop accounts or mule accounts, which are later emptied. Small banks end up repaying their customers whose checks are stolen, but it can take months for them to get reimbursed by large banks in contravention of longstanding Uniform Commercial Code rules.