NY’s top bank regulator promising oversight of consultants using old statute + MORE Nov 1st

ALBANY, N.Y. – New York’s top financial regulator has promised more oversight of bank consultants, including large accounting firms, citing an old, ignored state law that gives his office “the power to drive reform.”
Addressing a conference on corporate responsibility this week in Binghamton, Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky said consultants are hired by banks to straighten out problems but can be conflicted taking tough stands with the clients who pay them.
“What we realized as we were starting to look not only at Standard Chartered but at other banks who have especially anti-money-laundering problems, what we realized is consultants they were hiring to try and clean this up and to try and expose what went wrong were often almost as compromised as the banks themselves,” Lawsky said. They found nobody was actually regulating the consultants, but he said Department of Financial Services lawyers unearthed a century-old New York banking statute that requires DFS approval for consultants to access confidential bank information…

Whether you're looking to purchase a property or refinance a current mortgage, there's no shortage of options when it comes to obtaining home loans. While most Canadians may associate taking out a mortgage with a visit to their local financial institution, the rise of computers has made it easier than ever for individuals to obtain financing, oftentimes from the comfort of their homes.
Online lending
Online lenders are typically broken up into three types. The first type technically isn't a lender, but a website that aggregates products from many different lenders, offering interested parties a chance to browse what's currently on offer, including mortgage rates.
The second type is the online counterpart to a financial institution borrowers can visit in real life. These include websites for banks and credit unions where borrowers can fill out forms and find out their chances of getting approved for a home loan.
The third type of online lending, and the type most associated with the term, involves lenders that are focused solely on attracting customers online…

Eight large U.S. banks must also test for the first time whether they can cope with the hypothetical default of their largest trading partner