10 biggest financial laws passed since Dodd-Frank
March 6, 2018 11:22 AM
There's been a legislative bottleneck since the the crisis-era law went into effect, but Congress has moved forward on a handful of significant changes.
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JOBS Act
The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, signed into law by then-President Barack Obama in April 2012, was passed in the wake of the crisis to help small businesses raise funds from the capital markets.
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Sharing of privileged information with CFPB
In December 2012, Congress passed a bill clarifying that attorney-client privilege is not waived when sensitive information is submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Banks had warned that Dodd-Frank did not adequately address the issue, raising questions about whether the same standard used with prudential regulators would still apply. Lawmakers approved a similar measure for nonbanks sharing information with federal and state regulators in 2014.
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ATM fee disclosures
Later in December 2012, lawmakers passed a measure to stop a spate of nuisance lawsuits against banks for failing to provide fee notices on or near ATMs in addition to the onscreen warning.
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Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act
Congress modified a flood insurance law in March 2014 to ensure that some homeowners wouldn't suddenly be faced with unaffordable flood insurance premiums. Some community banks had worried that a number of borrowers could default on their mortgages in the face of dramatically increased flood insurance premiums.
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Swaps pushout
Lawmakers unwound a Dodd-Frank measure banning certain swaps trading within depositories in December 2014, as part of a government funding package known as the "cromnibus." Critics, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., fought vigorously against the inclusion of the provision, but it was ultimately passed with the help of several Democratic colleagues before being signed into law by President Obama. (For the record, Obama opposed the provision but needed the overall bill to be approved.)
Capital standards for insurers
Just days after the highly controversial passage of the "swaps pushout" rollback, the White House signed a bill clarifying the Federal Reserve's authority to write capital standards appropriate for insurers, instead of following a banklike model. The Fed gained some oversight of large insurers under Dodd-Frank.
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TRIA reauthorization
Policymakers reauthorized the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act in January 2015, after the terrorism insurance program was briefly allowed to expire. House Republicans, including Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, used the legislation as a vehicle to move an unrelated Dodd-Frank provision ensuring that so-called derivatives end users were not subject to margin requirements.
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Ex-Im Bank Reauthorization
After a protracted battle, Congress passed a bill to fund the Export-Import Bank in December 2015. The bank faced strong opposition from some Republicans, including Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, then chairman of the Banking Committee, who pushed for the program's funding to lapse that prior summer. Even after the bank's reauthorization, Shelby held up nominations to the bank's board through the end of 2016, preventing the bank from financing large deals.
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Scrapping SEC's extraction rule
Congress threw out the Securities and Exchange Commission's resource extraction rule — a Dodd-Frank mandate — in February 2017, using the Congressional Review Act. The rule, which had been challenged and overthrown in court and then reissued, would have required energy and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.
Tossing CFPB's arbitration rule
In November 2017, lawmakers used the Congressional Review Act to target a second Dodd-Frank measure, this time getting rid of the CFPB's arbitration rule, which banned financial companies from using mandatory arbitration in their contracts.
