The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today announced that the threshold for exempting loans from special appraisal requirements for higher-priced mortgage loans during 2018 will increase from $25,500 to $26,000.
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The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued two Statements on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), one on risks of ICOs for investors and one on the rules applicable to firms involved in ICOs. ESMA has observed a rapid growth in ICOs globally and in Europe and is concerned that investors may be unaware of the high risks that they are taking when investing in ICOs. Additionally, ESMA is concerned that firms involved in ICOs may conduct their activities without complying with relevant applicable EU legislation.
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Contracts for differences (CFDs), including financial spread bets, with cryptocurrencies as the underlying investment are increasingly being marketed to consumers. These products are extremely high-risk, speculative products. This is a warning of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to inform consumers about the risks of buying them.
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The Financial Stability Institute (FSI) was jointly created in 1998 by the BIS and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The FSI’s main objectives are to: (i) promote sound supervisory standards and practices globally and support full implementation of these standards in all countries; (ii) keep supervisors updated with the latest information on market products, practices and techniques; (iii) provide a venue for policy discussion and sharing of supervisory practices and experiences; and (iv) promote cross-sectoral and cross-border supervisory contacts and cooperation. These objectives are achieved through the production of FSI Insights on policy implementation and other publications, meetings and conferences with senior officials and FSI Connect, the BIS’s web-based learning tool for financial sector supervisors.
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Julia Hoggett, the new Director of Market Oversight at the FCA, shares in her speech several of her observations, regarding both MAR; the relatively newly minted Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) and more broadly the overall ‘market abuse regime’. Her aim is to help frame not just the FCA’s approach, but how FCA hope the industry is thinking about both MAR and the regime as a whole.
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In this article the author will consider how central banking in the United Kingdom and the United States has evolved in response to the challenges of recent years. He will address a limited set of topics. These remarks are divided into three parts. In the first part, he will discuss several aspects of aggregate monetary policy: central bank independence, policy transparency, and policy tools. In the second part, he will consider differences between the approaches of the two banks to their lender-of-last-resort function. And, third, he will close with brief reflections on the central bank’s responsibility for financial stability.
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The Financial Conduct Authority has today announced that Capita Financial Managers Limited (CFM) has been publicly censured and will pay up to £66 million to those investors who suffered loss as a result of investing in the Guaranteed Low Risk Income Fund, Series 1 (or as it became later known, the Connaught Income Fund, Series 1) (“the Fund”), which is now in liquidation. The payment will be made via the FCA.
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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has published the paper ‘Policy Rules for Capital Controls’. This paper exames two possible objectives: macroprudential or trade competitiveness, with which policymakers in emerging market economies (EMEs) may have used capital controls. With this paper BIS attempts to borrow the tradition of estimating policy reaction functions in monetary policy literature and apply it to capital controls policy literature.
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The European banking supervision is operating for three years. At the ECB Forum on Banking Supervison Mario Draghi, President of the ECB, talks about the accomplishments and the benefists of the banking supervision. How its scale have been the changes the single supervisor has prompted in the conduct of supervision. It has broken with the past in a single, but fundamental way. It has brought about a more uniform approach in how banks are supervised, leading to a more resilient banking sector overall.
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The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has contributed to the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) paper on ‘Authorised Push Payment Scams’. The FCA committed to identify if there were any firm-specific or sector-wide issues in the way banks handle authorised push payment scams. The FCA has engaged with a number of banks to understand their policies and procedures for handling push payment scams. Continue reading…