August 18, 2023

Online Portal Opens for Farm Relief Program

As shared by MBA earlier this week, Missouri State Treasurer Vivek Malek introduced the Farm Relief Loan program to provide $100 million in financial assistance to farmers and ranchers affected by this year’s drought. The online portal for the program, available through MOBUCK$, is open until 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13, or earlier if demand exhausts funds. A guidance memo was released Thursday about the program.

This announcement from the treasurer does NOT reopen MOBUCK$ for its traditional uses. If you have questions, please contact MBA Senior Vice President David Kent.

Wagner, Lawmakers Want FDIC to Consider Regional Banks in Proposed Assessment

Congresswoman Ann Wagner said the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation needs to consider the effects on midsize and regional banks as it moves forward with a proposed special assessment to recover the costs of protecting uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. In a letter to FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg, Wagner joined 13 House lawmakers who said the assessment “is not occurring in a vacuum,” as it comes at the same time as banking regulators consider increased capital requirements for banks with more than $100 billion in assets.

“Combined, those anticipated changes and the special FDIC assessment will have disproportionate and lasting repercussions on borrowers, depositors and communities served by regional banks,” the lawmakers said. “Those banks will be faced with difficult choices of where and how to deploy fewer resources for consumers and customers, and reduced credit opportunities will result.”

The proposed assessment would exempt the first $5 billion in uninsured deposits. The lawmakers said the assessment base should be based on a date no earlier than March 31, 2023, “to ensure an accurate and fair reflection of balances in uninsured deposits that existed at the time of the systemic risk determination.”

KBA Files Complaint on 1071 Rule

The Kentucky Bankers Association and eight of its members have filed a complaint  in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Kentucky challenging the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue Section 1071 rules, the procedure by which the rule was introduced and the content of the rule, including its infringement on banks’ freedom of speech.

The eight Kentucky banks are not members of the American Bankers Association; KBA said the complaint was filed on behalf of all its members that are not ABA members. KBA has filed a motion for a temporary injunction on the enforcement of the 1071 rule.

As previously shared, a federal judge in Texas issued an order blocking enforcement of Section 1071 while the U.S. Supreme Court hears a challenge to the constitutionality of the CFPB’s funding structure. The injunction came at the request of the ABA, TBA and Texas-based Rio Bank in litigation challenging the 1071 rule. The judge did not accept ABA’s and TBA’s request for the injunction to apply to all financial institutions covered by the rule. Instead, the judge chose to provide relief only to TBA and ABA member banks across the country. MBA and state banker associations have urged the CFPB to extend a court-ordered stay of its Section 1071 final rule to cover all FDIC-insured banks.

CFPB Updates Small Business Lending Rule Filing Instructions

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued an update to its previously published filing instructions guide for small business lending data. According to the bureau, the update reorders certain demographic information codes to better correlate with Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, makes minor wording clarifications to the pricing information data point, and makes minor administrative updates to the validation IDs.

The CFPB also noted the recent court order staying implementation of the rule for American Bankers Association and Texas Bankers Association members until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a separate case involving the bureau’s funding structure.