Dodd-Frank Forcing Lenders into Making More Compliance Hires
November 21, 2011
The regulatory burden of the Dodd-Frank Act creates pressure on community banks to hire additional compliance staff instead of customer-facing staff, reducing resources that could be directly applied to serving a banks customers, resulting in fewer mortgages getting made, slower job growth and a weaker economy, according to Steve Wilson, the American Bankers Associations immediate past chairman. The Dodd-Frank provisions he cited as particularly troubling for community banks include risk retention, higher capital requirements, narrower qualifications for capital, and doubling the size of the deposit insurance fund taking as much as $50 billion out of the earnings and capital of the industry in the process. The Dodd-Frank Act also requires 20 new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting obligations, Wilson said in a speech last week. These and other reporting requirements will add considerable compliance costs to every banks bottom line.