The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) commenced its e-HKD Pilot Programme for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) on 18 May.

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published its final rule implementing Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act on March 30, 2023.  The rule requires lenders to collect and report data about their small business lending activities, with the purpose of facilitating enforcement of fair lending laws with respect to women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses. In this Legal Update, we discuss the background of the final rule and spotlight some of the new rule’s key requirements, including which institutions are covered, the data points institutions will be required to collect and report, and significant changes made to the final rule from the CFPB’s 2021 proposed version of the rule.

Banking organizations looking to reduce the amount of risk-based regulatory capital required to support residential mortgage loan portfolios can use synthetic securitization to convert the capital treatment of their exposures from wholesale or retail exposures to securitization exposures. In this Legal Update, we discuss how regulatory capital requirements impact banking organizations that hold portfolios of residential mortgage loans and how synthetic securitization can help mitigate the capital charge associated with these portfolios.