Two large mortgage insurance (“MI”, also “PMI”) companies face a deadline from the state of North Carolina, which if breached would mean that they would no longer be able to write MI in the state.

North Carolina imposes capital requirements on mortgage insurers. In general, they want an MI company to have a very sound financial position.

There are only 8 active mortgage insurance firms in the United States. One, CMG, is primarily focused on (more…)

NetSpend’s annual report says that they have been told by the Office of Thrift Supervision says any new relationships between MetaBank and existing program partners will require OTS approval.

NetSpend is an existing partner/program manager for cards issued by MetaBank. This is an interesting wrinkle (more…)

The directors of Southern Community Financial (SCMF) have taken an unusual step in their response to the financial crisis by reducing their own pay packages.

Executive compensation should be designed in such a way that directors share in the pain, and not just in the gain.

SCMF is breaking with the status quo in doing that. All kinds of financial companies have gone ahead with huge compensation packages for their brass, even as their share prices cratered. While this is a story with a certain populist appeal, shareholders are the real losers. Compensation systems don’t work and there is little that can be done as long as boards maintain their current practices for nominating and electing.

I am going to contrast the decisions by SCMF, a small bank from Southeastern North Carolina, with AIG. AIG is (more…)

JP Morgan Chase has created a fee schedule for its Chase Total Checking Account (“CTCA”) that systematically pulls dollars out of the pockets of retired Americans.

The Chase Total Checking Account charges a monthly fee to any account holder that fails to make a single direct deposit of at least $500 per month. The CTCA fee can be avoided if you maintain a daily minimum balance of $1,500, or if you have an average balance of $2,500, or if you have $5,000 in any combination of Chase accounts worth a combined sum of $5,000.

If the account holder can’t meet those hurdles, then Chase takes $12 from the account. This in (more…)

EZCorp (EZPW), the parent of well-known pawn shop EZ Pawn, secured up to as much as $225 million in a revolving line of credit. The credit agreement is secured by various unnamed lenders and administered by Wells Fargo.

The new credit line replaces an $80 million line and a $40 million term loan that were both set to expire in the next 18 months. EZ paid down about $22.5 million in (more…)