The Clearing House and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association today issued a white paper identifying key issues that regulators should consider as they develop a comprehensive resolution framework for systemically important CCPs.

The Clearing House (TCH) issued a report, The Role of the Board of Directors in Promoting Effective Governance and Safety and Soundness for Large U.S. Banking Organizations, to serve as a resource to both banks and their supervisors about the respective roles of directors and management.  The report highlights the growing responsibilities and emphasis being placed on banking organizations’ board of directors by U.S. regulators.  It also provides recommendations to regulators on how best to address what is often seen as a divergence between the role of the board, which is one of oversight, and regulatory compliance-related expectations for directors which at times may overlap with management’s responsibility. 

In a letter to the Federal Reserve Board, The Clearing House (TCH) calls for the proposal for implementing a countercyclical capital buffer to be revised to ensure that any future decision to establish a countercyclical capital buffer is subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act.  The letter also suggests that the proposal be empirically grounded.

Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:JKHY) is a leading provider of technology solutions and payment processing services primarily for the financial services industry. Its JHA Payment Solutions™ group today announced a partnership with The Clearing House (TCH) to expand the scope of U.S. financial institutions equipped to send and receive new real-time transactions. 

Late Friday, The Clearing House, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, and the Financial Services Forum submitted comments to the Federal Reserve in response to its proposal to impose  total loss absorbing capacity, long-term debt and related “clean holding company” requirements on global systemically important banking groups (G-SIBs).  The associations express the industry’s strong support for a TLAC requirement for G-SIBs, which is a crucial aspect of ending “Too Big to Fail” by helping ensure that these institutions can be resolved in an orderly way at the expense of creditors and shareholders (and not taxpayers). The associations also assert that the proposal contains a number of requirements that are counterproductive or unnecessary to achieving the Fed’s policy objectives.  In response, the associations provide a number of suggestions aimed at making the proposal more workable and effective. 
 

The Clearing House Association (TCH) today published a final updated version of its Guiding Principles for Anti-Money Laundering Policies and Procedures in Correspondent Banking. The Guiding Principles, which were initially published in 2002, are intended to provide guidance to U.S. banks engaged in foreign correspondent banking and to assist U.S. banks in implementing key anti-money laundering (AML) procedures.

The Clearing House (TCH) today welcomed the release of a report by the Federal Reserve outlining its progress in support of improvements to the U.S. payment system.  The Clearing House is the only ACH (automated clearing house) and wire operator in the U.S. other than the Federal Reserve, and TCH is currently working to build a new, ubiquitous real-time payment system.  As part of its effort, TCH worked to align its new real-time system with the Federal Reserve’s efforts to improve the U.S. payments system.

The Clearing House Payments Company acquired The Payments Authority, a Michigan based regional payments association. Located throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Guam, regional payments associations (RPAs) are specially recognized providers of payments education, publications and support, historically focused on ACH. Following the acquisition, The Payments Authority will be combined with The Clearing House’s existing RPA, with the resulting RPA organization doing business as The Clearing House Payments Authority.

VocaLink, the UK-based international payment systems provider, has signed a contract with The Clearing House (TCH) to develop a national real-time payment service in the U.S. In October, the two companies announced they had signed a letter of intent, and today’s contract signing finalizes the partnership and clears the way for work to build the system to begin immediately.

The Clearing House (TCH) provided recommendations to the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) in response to CPMI’s recent report on concerns about the safe and efficient functioning of the correspondent banking market and potential measures to improve the correspondent banking environment.  In its letter, TCH agreed that technical improvements to information sharing and similar anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing tools may be helpful in improving access to correspondent banking services.  However, TCH also stressed that it is just as important that policymakers and banks work together to better and more clearly define the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders.

This working paper says payments systems need to evolve to deliver new value to users, support appropriate risk management, and reward innovation and investment.

The Clearing House (TCH) today announced that it is teaming with FIS^TM to deliver a ubiquitous real-time payment system for the United States.

Today, The Clearing House (TCH) announced it has entered into a letter of intent with VocaLink, the UK-based international payment systems provider, to help build and deliver core elements of TCH’s new real-time payment system for the United States. 

The Clearing House welcomes the Federal Reserve’s decision to adopt NACHA’s rules for same-day ACH.   Under the terms of NACHA’s ballot, the effective date of NACHA’s rules was contingent upon NACHA receiving written confirmation from the Federal Reserve Board that it will support the rules.  By confirming its support, NACHA’s same-day ACH rules will begin to take effect as of September 23, 2016, as indicated in NACHA’s ballot.

On September 18, The Clearing House Association (TCH) submitted a letter to the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) recommending that global supervisory authorities require central counterparties (CCPs) to adopt four key enhancements to CCP risk governance and member consultation processes. 

In his statement, The Clearing House CEO Jim Aramanda noted that  although the final rule appears to include some improvements to the proposal, The Clearing House (TCH) remains concerned that the final rule failed to address a number of significant flaws identified in our comment letter. These remaining flaws will have meaningful and negative consequences, especially for the robustness and liquidity of markets served by activities disproportionately impacted by the final rule, and will result in adverse impacts to customers and the real economy.

The Clearing House (TCH) welcomed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) release of its “Consumer Protection Principles” for faster payment systems. TCH agrees with the CFPB’s views on the importance of protecting consumers that use faster payments, and strongly supports making consumers’ interests a key consideration as the industry works to build a new real-time payment system.

The Clearing House Association (TCH) released its updated Guiding Principles for Enhancing U.S. Banking Organization Corporate Governance (Governance Principles). TCH’s Governance Principles aim to help provide a framework for bank corporate governance that seeks to facilitate more effective board oversight, enhance bank safety and soundness, promote confidence in banks and encourage consistent supervisory guidance. 

The Clearing House’s (TCH) Chief Risk Officer Russell Fitzgibbons stressed the importance of continued improvement in collaboration between the private sector and the government in combating cyberattacks and emphasized the need for comprehensive cyber threat information-sharing legislation at a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing on protecting critical financial services infrastructure. 

The Protecting Cyber Networks Act (H.R. 1560) and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act (H.R. 1731), will help better protect Americans’ sensitive personal information by facilitating more effective information sharing between the government and private sector which is critical to detecting and preventing cybercrime. The Clearing House is, however, disappointed that the House adopted amendments to both bills that will require them to sunset in seven years. These threats will not sunset and we need to ensure certainty and consistency for the long term. 

The Clearing House Association (TCH), joined by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR), filed a comment letter with the Federal Reserve in response to its proposal to impose an additional capital surcharge requirement on U.S. global systemically important bank holding companies suggesting that the proposal be revised to better reflect the actual systemic risk posed by U.S. G-SIBs.

In a comment letter filed with the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in response to its “Revisions to the Standardized Approach for Credit Risk and Capital Floors: The Design of a Framework Based on Standardized Approaches” The Clearing House identifies areas where the Proposals should be modified to better achieve the Committee’s stated objectives of making the Standardized Approach more risk-sensitive, reducing reliance on external credit ratings and strengthening the comparability of risk-weighted asset calculations across jurisdictions.

The Clearing House submitted a comment letter to FinCEN requesting guidance that will better enable banks to share suspicious activity reports (SARs) within their international organizations for enterprise-wide AML compliance purposes.

The Clearing House Association filed a comment letter with U.S. bank regulators on proposed revisions to the U.S. Basel III capital rules for banks with consolidated total assets of at least $250 billion and consolidated on balance sheet foreign assets of at least $10 billion, expressing its strong support for the proposed revisions.

The Clearing House Association, in coordination with ABA, FSR, and IIB, filed a letter with the Federal Reserve on its proposed revisions to two important supervisory liquidity reports, the Complex Institution Liquidity Monitoring Report (FR 2052a) and the Liquidity Monitoring Report (FR 2052b). In the letter, the associations suggest a number of recommendations that would more closely conform these liquidity reports with the requirements of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and international standards.