| Amid COVID Fair Finance
Watch Challenges Webster Bank Bid For State
Farm HSAs to OCC
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- CJR -
PFT
UN GATE / SDNY
COURT, May 2 – Amid the
Coronavirus pandemic, U.S.
bank regulators like
Comptroller of the Currency
Joseph Otting are continuing
to rubber stamp bank mergers,
even by banks who are
under-performing in the
Paycheck Protection Program.
On May 2
Fair Finance Watch, and Inner
City Press on FOIA, filed a
formal challenge with Otting's
OCC to the application by
Webster Bank to acquire State
Farm Bank FSB, its problematic
health savings accounts, no
less. Here is some of it:
"This is a timely
first comment opposing and
requesting an extension of the
OCC's public comment period on
the Application by Webster
Bank NA to acquire State Farm
FSB / Health Savings Accounts.
Given complaints against State
Farm's HSAs, and Webster
Bank's PPP performance, public
hearings are needed when they
are not, as now, prohibited by
social distancing rules. The
CRA deform
proposal should be shelved.
While Comptroller
Otting has said he never saw
discrimination (except being
told by family members about
it), consider for the record
on this application that even
as reflected by the
too-limited 2018 HMDA data
available on the CFPB's
website, Webster Bank in New
York State in 2018 made 270
loans to whites - and only
NINE to African Americans, out
of proportion to the
demographics of its service
area and of other lenders'
activities in
it.
While making only NINE loans
to African Americans in NYS in
2018, Webster denied 16
applications from Africans,
much more disparate that its
ratio for whites: 270 loans
made, 145 denial:
significantly more disparate
to African Americans.
This application should be
denied. And for the record,
the CFPB's elimination of the
HMDA information that has been
available on the FFIEC's and
even its own website for 2017
data is part of the
destruction of CRA and HMDA of
which the OCC is a
part.
Consider for the record that
"the head of Waterbury-based
Webster Bank admitted his
company can improve its
performance in getting money
into the hands of loan
applicants. “Certainly
we wanted to help every small
business borrower and customer
of Webster that we could,”
said CEO John Ciulla, speaking
Tuesday on a conference call.
“We got through approximately
30 percent applications
approved (and) 30 percent
funded, plus or minus a few
percentage points on both
sides of that." Webster
Bank has the third biggest
base of deposits in
Connecticut, offering both
traditional savings and loans
accounts as well as a
health-savings account
business that is among the
largest in the nation. On
Tuesday, Webster bolstered its
HSA Bank subsidiary with the
acquisition of 24,000
health-savings accounts from
State Farm totaling $140
million."
No, that
has not been approved. And it
should not be. #TreasureCRA.
Otting's crusade to weaken the
Community Reinvestment Act has
ghoulishly persisted even as
his partner the FDIC has given
foreign banks an extension of
their comment period, on
living wills. We'll have more
on this.
***
Your
support means a lot. As little as $5 a month
helps keep us going and grants you access to
exclusive bonus material on our Patreon
page. Click
here to become a patron.
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
SDNY Press Room 480, front cubicle
500 Pearl Street, NY NY 10007 USA
Past
& future at UN: Room S-303, UN,
NY 10017 USA
Mail: Box 20047, Dag
Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other, earlier Inner City Press are
listed here,
and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2020 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com for
|
,
