LexRegPulse Daily

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Saturday, September 26, 2026. The Federal Reserve rewrote the rulebook its own examiners work under this week — and a bank failure in California shows exactly what's at stake in getting that right. Here's the top line. The Fed posted an updated Statement of Supervisory Operating Principles on September 24, replacing last October's version. It...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Friday, September 25, 2026. The Federal Reserve closed out the stablecoin rulebook this week. Every primary federal regulator — the OCC, the FDIC, the NCUA, and now the Fed — has a stablecoin proposal on the table. None has a final rule. For banks weighing whether to issue, the open question isn't regulatory uncertainty anymore. It's the calendar....

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Thursday, September 24. Bond markets repriced the rest of the year on Wednesday. The 10-year Treasury yield jumped 15 basis points — its largest single-day move in 17 months — and trades at 5.114 percent pre-market. The 30-year is near its highest settlement since June 2004. Two Fed officials pushed markets there: New York Fed President John Williams said...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Wednesday, September 23, 2026. SoFi Bank went live yesterday settling its card program in its own stablecoin across Mastercard's network — the first national bank to move card settlement onto a token it issues. Expected volume: more than $25 billion a year. Cardholder money stays exactly where it was — insured deposits. What moved is the leg between is...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Tuesday, September 22, 2026. The FDIC's merger-review rewrite hits the Federal Register today, and the comment clock starts now. Two proposals the board approved September 17 were filed for publication today. One rewrites how the agency reviews deals under the Bank Merger Act. The other sets which state's laws reach an out-of-state state bank. C...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Monday, September 21. The OCC just granted three more national trust charters to crypto infrastructure firms — Bastion, Catena, and Agora. That keeps the trust-charter count climbing, and it's today's lead because it changes who your bank might be onboarding as a client. Here's what "conditional" actually means. These approvals are...

ALEX: You're listening to the LexRegPulse Weekly for September 20 — week in review. I'm Alex. MORGAN: And I'm Morgan. Here's what mattered this week. ALEX: The Fed lifted its target range to 3.75 to 4 percent Wednesday — its first increase since July 2023 — on a unanimous 12-0 vote. Going into the meeting the market had already flipped: four cuts priced at the start of the year...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Saturday, September 19, 2026. The Federal Reserve knew about Silicon Valley Bank's vulnerabilities a year before it failed. That's the headline from Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman's review, released in London Friday. Examiners had documented unrealized losses exceeding capital, a deposit base 94 percent uninsured, and no readiness...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Friday, September 18, 2026. The FDIC's board put two proposals on the table Thursday that rewrite how the agency reviews bank mergers and which state's laws reach an out-of-state bank. Both are proposals only — today's applications still run under the 1998 merger policy statement. That gap matters right now: Enova withdrew its bid to buy Gras...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Thursday, September 17, 2026. The Federal Reserve raised its target rate a quarter point Wednesday, to 3.75 to 4 percent. It's the first increase since July 2023, ending the longest pause since 2008. The vote was 12 to 0 — the first unanimous decision since May 2025. And the Committee's own projections now show another hike before year-end, with...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Wednesday, September 16, 2026. The CLARITY Act died Tuesday on a 49-50 cloture vote, eleven short of what it needed. No Democrat voted yes. Their objection was ethics guardrails, not market structure — which means the stablecoin yield fight banks spent a month waging stays unresolved in statute. Bitcoin fell below $76,000. Digital-asset ETFs lost $592 milli...

ALEX: You're listening to the LexRegPulse Weekly for the week of September 13. I'm Alex. MORGAN: And I'm Morgan. Here's what mattered this week. ALEX: Chime agreed Tuesday to buy Central Service Corporation, the parent of Stride Bank, for $590 million in cash — buying outright the charter it's rented deposits from for seven years. Shares rose 11 percent on the announcement...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Tuesday, September 15, 2026. The Senate votes today on cloture for the CLARITY Act — the digital-asset market structure bill — and the deciding fight isn't about crypto regulation at all. It's about deposits. Sixty votes are needed, meaning roughly nine Democrats have to cross over. The real question: can stablecoin issuers pay yield on balances...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Monday, September 14, 2026. Three federal banking agencies moved together today, and their rule reshapes how examiners work with eligible mid-size banks going forward. The OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC put their interim final rule into effect, lifting the asset ceiling for extended on-site examinations to 6 billion dollars. That's the headline for ban...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Friday, September 11. The story banks should watch today is Nubank's US launch. It's a fresh signal on how digital-first competitors are entering the American market without waiting for their own charter. Regulators, meanwhile, gave community banks meaningful examination relief — but paired it with a narrower standard for what counts as an examine...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Thursday, September 10. Treasury moved on bond-market liquidity Wednesday, and yields rose anyway. Treasury tripled its long-end buyback program to $6 billion, against the $2 billion first communicated. The 10-year yield still reached about 4.85% — its highest since November 2023. The 30-year passed 5.3%. Brent crude traded above $101 a barrel the same da...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Wednesday, September 9, 2026. Chime is buying its own bank charter. The company agreed Tuesday to pay $590 million cash for Central Service Corporation, parent of Stride Bank — the same bank that's held Chime's deposits for seven years as its sponsor. Chime called it faster than applying for a charter from scratch, and it strips out partner-bank f...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Tuesday, September 8, 2026. Canada's counter-tariffs took effect at 12:01 this morning. Ottawa matched US rates on $27.6 billion of imports — 15%, 25%, and 50% — with steel hit hardest, alongside dairy, appliances, farm equipment, and electronics. The schedule runs past 700 tariff lines. This isn't a market story. It's a credit-file story....

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Monday, September 7. The Federal Reserve enters its pre-meeting quiet period today, and the September 16 decision is genuinely two-sided. UBS now forecasts two rate increases in 2026 — a call built on Friday's strong jobs report, not on inflation data still to come. Bitcoin fell below $80,000 as hike bets firmed. But the labor picture is mixed undernea...

ALEX: You're listening to the LexRegPulse Weekly for August 31 through September 6, 2026. I'm Alex. MORGAN: And I'm Morgan. Here's what mattered this week. ALEX: The OCC spent July and August saying no — Wise in July, Bunq in August. On Thursday it said yes twice, but not in the old binary way. Revolut got a conditional national bank charter, and the same day the agency approve...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Saturday, September 5, 2026. Friday's jobs report defied the forecast. Employers added 162,000 positions in August, against forecasts near 55,000. Unemployment held at 4.1%. July's reported decline got revised into a gain. Strong data should calm markets. Instead, equities fell and Treasury yields jumped — investors read the report as rate risk, n...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Friday, September 4. The OCC approved two fintech bank charters in a single day this week — and drew a new line around what those charters can actually do. Revolut, the British fintech with roughly a million US customers, won conditional approval September 3 for a full national bank charter. But four product lines — including leveraged currency trading — ar...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Thursday, September 3, 2026. Five regulators just told banks they can talk to customers again. The Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, NCUA and FinCEN issued a joint statement Wednesday clarifying what the Bank Secrecy Act's secrecy rule actually covers. It bars disclosing a Suspicious Activity Report or the fact one exists — nothing more. The underlying fac...

Alex here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Wednesday, September 2. The vendor that runs core banking systems for thousands of community banks and credit unions has been hit by ransomware. Jack Henry & Associates was attacked, Finextra reported Wednesday. Scope, affected systems, and restoration timing are still undisclosed. That's the operational problem: Jack Henry sits inside deposit proc...

Morgan here. This is LexRegPulse Daily for Tuesday, September 1. Two tankers were struck in the Strait of Hormuz today, extending the exchange between U.S. and Iranian forces that began over the weekend. Brent crude pushed above 92 dollars a barrel. The 10-year Treasury touched a 19-month high — two basis points from its highest level since 2007. Through August, the rate debate was labor data agai...