What is the certification? What job do you have that requires knowledge of Banking Regulations? OK and a banking story/question. So, I'm with a big bank that I started using as a freshman in college. Sometimes my bank statements don't reflect my purchases until a week or so after said purchase, in which case I sometimes forget what my actual balance is, and so sometimes I end up in the red. When I was using the bank card I had in high school (with another bank), this would automatically result in an overdraft fee. So after switching to this new bank, and (sometime around 2010 due to the CREDIT CARD Act I think) opting out of overdraft protection, I never pay fees when I dip into the red. What.. happened? Does this new bank just not want to collect a fee? Why do they cover my purchase if I opted out of overdraft protection?
The certification is called the CRCM. I have a job at a major US Bank working in their compliance department. My job function is very similar to, but not the same as, audit. I have to look over completed work that other people in the bank have done in order to ensure it was done in accordance with federal regulations, so I do deal with them in a very hands-on sort of day-to-day manner. You can ask me more about it; I kind of lucked into it after college and have stayed there ever since. Your suspicions as to what would cause this are valid. However, it's not the Credit CARD Act that mandated this change. It's actually an amendment to Reg E, which governs electronic transactions on debit accounts. (The CARD Act only covers credit transactions. In the banking world, credit and debit are two wildly different animals.) What happened is that if you opted out of overdrafts, you basically said "I don't agree to this service and I don't agree to pay a fee if I go into the red." It then becomes your bank's responsibility to stop those transactions from happening. Depending on your bank, your bank may have decided to choose to pay certain transactions even if they drive you into overdraft. Usually banks that do this differentiate between 1-time transactions (like point of sale, like buying something at your Wawa) vs. recurring ACH transactions and checks. The reasoning I have seen presented behind this is that recurring ACHs, checks, and similar sorts of transactions are more likely to be "important," i.e., things like rent, bills, etc, that it would be more important to the cardholder to have paid. Then they will still block things like, "Oh I need cigarettes, let me go to Happy Harry's" (typically that would be a POS, or point-of-sale, transaction). However the bank can still choose to pay all your charges if they want to. Because you didn't opt in, they can't charge you a fee, and it's kind of their responsibility that you went over - since they are supposed to be monitoring your account and now blocking anything that takes you over the limit.(sometime around 2010 due to the CREDIT CARD Act I think) opting out of overdraft protection, I never pay fees when I dip into the red
What's Reg E? Is that like a part of the US Code, the collection of laws that has 50 sections called Titles?
It is part of the Code of Financial Regulations, but more than that, I cannot tell you.