The Western Independent Bankers Association has named Community Bank of the Bay winner of its annual Community Bank of the Year award. The award highlighted the San Francisco Bay Area bank’s newly redesigned Bay Area Green Fund, which attracts capital and deposits that are exclusively loaned to local environmentally sustainable projects and companies. The association also praised the bank’s sponsorship of local nonprofit Mindblown Labs, which has included three years of free office space. Mindblown teaches underserved students at two Oakland high schools app development, helping them learn valuable skills and make money on the apps they create. Mindblown’s latest game, Thrive N Shine, is a financial literacy app geared toward teenagers and college-age youth.

Mortgage rates are likely to rise under any plan that would overhaul Fannie and Freddie. Lawmakers face a key dilemma: requiring successors to Fannie and Freddie to hold more capital could reduce the risk of future taxpayer losses, but would also raise borrowing costs. The Senate bill would require successors to maintain a 10% capital cushion. Fannie estimates that would cause rates to rise by around 0.5 and 1 percentage points from current levels, though borrowers with weaker credit could see rates rise by more than 3 percentage points. Freddie estimates rates will rise by 0.1 and 0.6 percentage points. Because any overhaul would be phased in over many years, borrowers wouldn’t see an immediate price spike.

Proposals by economists John Cochrane and Martin Wolf envision the elimination of fractional reserve banking in order to neutralize risk that resulted in the Great Recession. Wolf focuses on the risks introduced by the "private money" created as a byproduct of lending. He favors a system in which the government is given a complete monopoly on money creation. Cochrane argues that banks should be 100% funded by equity and that a tax should be placed on run-prone short-term debt. Krugman writes that Wolf and Cochrane's proposals each underestimate the complexity of regulating such a model and questions the assumption that banking problems were the root cause of the crisis.

FDIC officials have presented a new white paper exploring how the use of mobile phones could broaden banking access to unbanked and underbanked borrowers. The paper noted that 68% of unbanked adults have access to a cell phone, of which 49% are smartphones. "MFS is likely to be a more useful financial tool for the underserved if ways can be found to reconcile and meet the underserved's needs for electronic transactions with their need for paper payments or cash," the report said. Among the study's recommendations were steps to bridge the delivery of mobile financial services with the traditional payment methods underbanked consumers use, such as checks, money orders and cash.