Bank channel

While other regulators busily check off implementation goals set by last year's financial reform law, the new body charged with limiting threats to the financial system is getting lost in the shuffle.

With a 98% retention rate, USAA Federal Savings Bank seems to have little room to improve customer service. But it's spent the past two years and millions of dollars overhauling systems to do just that.

While some bankers are secretly gleeful the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not yet have a director, they are the ones likely to pay a heavy price as a result.

PayPal revolutionized how consumers pay for goods online. It's not about to be usurped by the mobile payments movement. Its parent, eBay Inc., is paying $240 million to buy Zong, a company that allows consumers to charge purchases to their phone bills.

While the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. made significant progress Wednesday toward building its new resolution regime, it left a key component still on the table.

Increases in initial public offerings would normally benefit banks, but a recent surge in IPO activity is instead threatening to further shrink lenders' balance sheets.

Plans to force the largest banks to hold as much as 2.5% more capital would put them at a competitive disadvantage to smaller institutions.

Did the Treasury Department act inappropriately when it sent a highly publicized — and very critical — comment letter to its own bureau objecting to a pending proposal? That's the question that was sparked in policy circles this week after the Obama administration blasted the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's preemption plan, arguing it violated the intent of the Dodd-Frank Act.

USAA, a financial institution and insurance provider serving military service people and their families, topped the latest J.D. Power & Associates' survey of self-directed investors' satisfaction while Merrill Edge, Bank of America Merrill Lynch's consumer brokerage unit, checked in last.

As part of a continuing effort to streamline its retail brokerage business, Wells Fargo & Company this week said it will sell its H.D. Vest financial services business to private equity firm Parthenon Capital Partners.

If Bank of America Corp.'s proposal to settle its mortgage-backed securities claims for $8.5 billion is approved as is by a court, the deal would provide the template for other banks to clean up their own MBS messes.

Citi Private Bank has hired Alexander “Lex” Zaharoff as managing director and head of the North America investment lab.

Consolidation continues to play a small but growing role in the resolution of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In the past two weeks, acquiring banks have agreed to resolve the unpaid Tarp funds of target institutions, bringing the number of such deals to 16 with the vast majority taking place since mid-2010.

With the macroeconomic outlook still glum, housing prices still depressed and the FHA's grip on the market for low-down payment loans still intact, the mortgage insurers are stuck in the same rut. New business volume remains down sharply from pre-crisis levels, the insurers continue to pay out hefty claims on soured mortgage loans, and the forecast for when the industry returns to profitability is again murky at best.

The Treasury Department has unexpectedly allied with state regulators and consumer groups in their bid to force the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to dial back its preemption standards.

For every answer international regulators give on a requirement for a large bank capital surcharge, it just feels like more questions pop up.

As banks search for their place in the fast evolving world of social media, they are increasingly looking to technology to help them cope with a tangle of potential regulatory and legal challenges.

By itself the drop in deposit account service fees caused by the year-old consumer overdraft protections is a minor problem for FNB Inc. of Dennison, Ohio.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act case whose outcome could shield banks and other lenders from litigation under a wide range of federal and state laws.

It turns out banks are reluctant to help dig their own graves. In letters to federal regulators, several institutions said they remain worried about a requirement that they submit a "living will" outlining how best to dismantle them in a crisis.