Pub. 2 2014 Issue 3

summer 2014 5 Financial Services Committee in May. Now we are urging bankers to generate support for them in the full House. The bills are: • H.R. 2673, the Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act, which would deem loans held in portfolio as Qual- ified Mortgages. • H.R. 4521, the Community Insti- tution Mortgage Relief Act, which would exempt lenders with less than $10 billion in assets from the Dodd- Frank Act’s escrow requirements and servicers handling fewer than 20,000 loans from the servicing rule. We also are throwing our weight behind a third bill, H.R. 4466, which embodies the spirit of reg relief by requiring regu- lators to review and reconcile conflicting regulations before finalizing new ones. Getting co-sponsors for these important bills is a critical step to gaining a vote on the House floor. That’s why we’ve been asking bankers like you to send letters, call and meet with House members to share the real-world impact of these bills – how they would help your bank and the customers in your communities. A strong vote by the House can influence whether the Senate takes up the legis- lation. And action on these bills would bode well for future, rifle-shot relief measures. Help us help your bank by responding to any grassroots action alerts you receive. Encourage your employees, directors and peers to do the same. (You’ll find tools to easily generate letters on these bills at aba.com/grassroots. ) ABA and your state association have been strong advocates, and our unified efforts helped get the bills this far. Your engagement can help get them across the finish line. n WASHINGTON UPDATE O ne of the things I often hear when I have the opportunity to speak with you and your colleagues at your state bankers association’s annual conven- tion is how new regulatory requirements are making it harder to lend and serve your communities. We know your regulatory burden is exces- sive – the Dodd-Frank Act has delivered 7,000 pages of new rules and guidance so far, and there’s more to come. The cumu- lative impact across the banking industry and across our economy is staggering. Banks’ compliance obligations also create unwieldy juxtapositions. When it comes to mortgage lending and servicing rules, for example, some banks are finding they must choose between serving customers and protecting themselves legally. ABA believes the solution to this seem- ingly intractable problem lies in what we call “tailored regulation.” By that we mean to government policies that recognize the diversity of the banking industry and the communities you serve. Rules that correspond to a bank’s char- ter, business model, geography and risk profile help to avoid the negative econom- ic consequences of unsuitable, inefficient bank regulation. While we have seen some successes with this approach – such as with improve- ments made to the Basel III and Volcker Rule regulations – we have a ways to go in undoing the damage done by Dodd- Frank. A special ABA-state bankers associations task force, however, has crafted an effective strategy to win you more relief. Assembled earlier this year, the ABA/ Alliance Regulatory Relief Task Force examined dozens of significant regula- tory burdens and identified a few that it believed could be addressed in a meaning- ful way through legislation this year. The focus on just a few was deliberate. It’s hard enough to get must-pass legislation, like spending authorization bills, through Congress. An omnibus relief bill for banks would have trouble getting to the runway, let alone getting liftoff. But targeted bills whose clear beneficiary is bank customers could and should stand a decent chance for enactment. Indeed, two bills that make the changes advocat- ed by the task force cleared the House ©2014AmericanBankersAssociation. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. A Rifle-Shot Approach to Reg Relief By Frank Keating, President and CEO, American Bankers Association E-mail Frank Keating at keating@aba.com