Banking: New York banking regulator wants to go fishing even in the absence of suspicion

Sept. 25, 2012 - PRLog -- In the article titled "Banking: US v Standard Chartered. NYDFS agreement signed," Morris-Cotterill says "The headlines and bloggers shout about the done deal, the money laundering compliance monitor and the USD250,000 million figure but none of those are the important parts of the story behind the agreement between Standard Chartered Bank and New York's Department of Financial Services. Moreover, the agreement demonstrates that StanChart's major failing is to be a successful foreign bank. "

He demonstrates that coverage of the regulatory action against the bank has been driven by the public relations demands of political interests.

But it is the wording in the agreement entered into between the bank and the Department of Financial Services that demonstrates the ulterior motive of the regulator whose Supervisor is a former prosecutor.

The article says

** It is interesting that the final agreement states NY DFS's position that the bank "prevented New York State regulators from performing complete safety and soundness examinations and from identifying suspicious patterns of activity, which could, among other things, allow regulators to assist law enforcement authorities."

** The final part of that statement is most telling: DFS impliedly admits moving into a political arena, beyond reporting suspicion but of using or desiring to use bank data for policy making.  It also shows that it expects access to the totality of customer data, even absent suspicion or, even, grounds for suspicion. In short, it wants to go fishing.

The article appears today at http://www.bankinginsurancesecurities.com