Enforcement

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has launched a new initiative, called the Fair Housing Enforcement Program, aimed at targeting discrimination in rental and home sale transactions.

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $3.2 billion to end a joint federal-state investigation into its handling of mortgage-backed securities, the fourth deal to be struck in a probe of the big U.S. banks' role in the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis it spawned.

U.S. Bancorp agreed to pay $10 million while Banco Santander settled for $3.4 million following missteps in how they handled earlier orders from regulators to fix faulty foreclosure practices, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

HSBC North America Holdings has agreed to pay $470 million to settle allegations it engaged in abusive practices in its mortgage foreclosure, origination and servicing operations.

Wells Fargo has reached a $16.2 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit regarding an alleged kickback scheme involving the shuttered Owings Mill, Md.-based Genuine Title.

Opus Capital Markets Consultants, a unit of Wipro, has created a division for identifying operational and loan-level risks within a residential mortgage servicing operation.

Wells Fargo & Co., the largest U.S. home lender, agreed to pay $1.2 billion to resolve claims related to its Federal Housing Administration mortgage practices.

Morgan Stanley will pay $63 million to settle a series of government lawsuits claiming the bank misrepresented securities it sold to banks that later failed.

While most federal banking regulators use enforcement actions as a way to shape industry practices, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is taking that to a whole other level, frequently using orders as a substitute for new rules or guidelines.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group took a surprise $5.2 billion hit to the value of its assets and set aside more money for past misconduct, limiting CEO Ross McEwan's ability to return capital to shareholders.