Risk management

The Justice Department's announcement that it would target individual executives at banks and other companies that are being investigated for wrongdoing has sparked a debate about whether the move is actually substantive or instead just designed to boost the agency's public image.

The rising costs to service mortgages reflects a market where there are not only downsides to being too small, but hurdles to being too large — raising the question of whether there's a middle ground where servicers are not too big, not too small, but just right.

Royal Bank of Scotland said it will return to selling interest-only mortgages after scrapping the riskier loans in the wake of the financial crisis.

Moody's Investors Service just flagged a risk in bonds backed by single-family rentals: there aren't enough special servicers.

Fraud risk has diminished as a result of widespread changes that lenders have made to their origination practices, according to Fitch Ratings.

M&T Bank has agreed to pay $485,000 and change its lending policies to settle a lawsuit that accused the Buffalo, N.Y., company of racial discrimination in making mortgage loans.

A new battle is brewing between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the government-sponsored enterprises set out to boost their purchases of low down payment loans.