Sarbanes-Oxley may drive small publicly-traded retail banks to go private or sell

TowerGroup Research Explores Evolving Impact of Sarbox Compliance and How Consumer Lending Sector Should Respond

While regulation is a fact of life in the financial services industry, compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is having a disproportionate impact on smaller financial institutions.

New research from TowerGroup finds that meeting new regulatory rigors is becoming increasingly difficult for smaller institutions that can ill-afford to increase both compliance and overall technology budgets. This is particularly challenging for small or community banks that offer mortgage, home equity or other consumer loan products, given that compliance in the consumer lending arena has tended to be a hodgepodge of semi-automated business processes, paper documents and numerous manual steps.

See full Article and see TowerGroup Press Release.