All in Regulatory Update

On 9/30/19, the OCC issued updates to the "Bank Supervision Process," "Community Bank Supervision," "Federal Branches and Agencies Supervision," and "Large Bank Supervision" booklets of the Comptroller’s Handbook. Updates to Comptroller’s Handbook booklets are summarized in the "Table of Updates Since Publication" in the back of each booklet. Refer to the "Foreword" booklet of the Comptroller’s Handbook for more information regarding the OCC’s process for updating booklets. The updated booklets reflect the following:

On September 27, 2019, the regulators issued joint guidance to increase the threshold for residential real estate transactions requiring an appraisal from $250,000 to $400,000.  This change represents the first change to the residential appraisal threshold since 1994.  In their joint release, the regulators explain that this change will provide burden relief without posing a threat to the safety and soundness of financial institutions. While an appraisal will now no longer be required for real estate transactions under $400,000, financial institutions are still required to obtain

During the end of September, Congress extended the National Flood Insurance Program for another few months, through November 21, 2019. As the NFIP was set to expire at the end of day on September 30, 2019, this new extension marks the thirteenth temporary extension of the flood program within the last few years. As we have noted before, this large number of temporary extensions signal a desire by Congress to make long-term changes to the program. In fact, Congress has been working on a bipartisan 5 year extension, but have yet to come to an agreement on what that extension would look like. As you have already probably noted, these continued short term extensions are…

On 9/24/19 the Department of Labor released a final rule that will make 1.3 American workers newly eligible for overtime pay. The final rule increases the earning thresholds for exempting executive, administrative and professional employees from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. The rule also allows employers to count a portion of certain bonuses/commissions towards meeting the salary level. In the final rule, which is effective on January 1, 2020, the Department of Labor is…

The CFPB has released the summer 2019 Edition of Supervisory Highlights. In this issue, topics include UDAAPs, auto loans, Supervision, compliance, credit cards, credit reports and scores, debt collection, Fair Credit Reporting Act, mortgage origination. The full version of Supervisory Highlights can be found here.

As you might expect, we will be coving the portions of Supervisory Highlights that relate to compliance professionals in our next Quarterly Compliance Update. You can view the tentative curriculum for our Q3 2019 Quarterly Compliance Update here.

On 9/20/2019, the Federal Reserve released the Second Issue 2019 of their Consumer Compliance Outlook. This edition includes two feature articles on Promoting Effective Change Management and Vendor Management Considerations for Flood Insurance Requirements. The current version of Consumer Compliance Outlook can be found here and we will be including this topic in our Q32019 Quarterly Compliance Update.

BSA ALERT! Update to CTR FAQ 16?

In this Compliance Clip (video) Adam talks about a whirlwind in the BSA world that took place over the last few weeks. FinCEN apparently made an update to CTR FAQ 16 (without any notification or clarification) that would change how CTRs are reported when a person conducting a transaction has multiple “roles,” such as would be the case if an individual made deposits on both their personal account and the account for a business. Adam explains what happened with FAQ 16 and what we need to look for going forward. For those who enjoy a bit of excitement in the BSA world, the change to FAQ 16 has definitely given something to think about (and to share with your BSA officer if they aren’t aware of this). Click this link to watch the video.

We received a question this week about when to expect more HMDA changes.  That’s right, more HMDA changes are on the horizon, but we really don’t know when to expect them.  As we reported back in May of 2019, the CFPB has issued two things that could result in more HMDA changes: 1) a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking as well as 2) an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This article provides a summary of the possible changes, what to look for, and a reminder that comments on both potential changes are due on October 15, 2019.