Banking

Banking executives and analysts worry that the Federal Reserve's aggressive plan to raise interest rates will be insufficient to tame inflation and overcome economic fallout from the war in Ukraine.

The move away from the scandal-plagued London interbank offered rate is going smoothly, according to a new survey of lenders and corporate borrowers. But many customers still face operational challenges ahead of a mid-2023 deadline for switching older loans.

In an update to an exam manual, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says racial or other bias associated with a wide range of financial products — not just credit — is illegal and subject to CFPB enforcement actions.

If lenders get to choose the credit-scoring model, the Big Three credit bureaus will likely set a price for VantageScore that is super low, so low that FICO cannot compete, just as Uber decimated the taxicab industry by setting prices artificially low until the taxicabs were gone, writes an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.

Some consumer protection initiatives, including those aimed at limiting overdraft charges and capping interchange fees, might have contributed to this lingering issue, a new Government Accountability Office report says.

The long-awaited Community Reinvestment Act reform plan is likely to address climate change and bank partnerships with nonbank lenders, while also taking into account the shrinking number of U.S. bank branches, government officials said Monday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took a step toward addressing appraisal bias with a proposal that kicked off an interagency rulemaking on automated valuation models, which use reams of data to assess property values.

The Houston bank negotiated the agreement with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition after closing its merger with BancorpSouth. That deal created a lender with $50 billion of assets and operations in nine states.

The fintech-turned-bank has bet big on pro football marketing. Sunday’s game at SoFi Stadium should give its customer acquisitions a boost, analysts say.

Banks and companies that use artificial intelligence to make loans agree with regulators that it should be tested for fairness. But they also say traditional loans could be just as biased.