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“Having people of color as financial advisors is very important because talking about money, insurance, savings, investments and estate planning is very personal,” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal of MRV Associates, a financial consultancy firm in New York City. “People need to be with people whom they feel can understand them, can empathize with them and are not judging them,” she said. People of color, especially immigrants, might not only be taking care of their immediate family but also other relatives as well, which may impact their ability to save and plan for retirement, she said. “If they are speaking to a financial advisor of their own culture, they may find it easier to share that information and give the advisor the full picture of their assets and liabilities,” she said.

“The broader financial services industry might also face renewed regulatory pressure. “I think in the Biden administration, you can anticipate there will be emphasis on regulating private equity,” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal of MRV Associates, which provides consulting and training in finance regulatory compliance. “These non-banks are what the financial stability board ‘other financial institutions,” Valladares said, pointing to nonprofit watchdog organizations that have pushed “for better and more regulation of private equity.” That may not have reverberated with enough legislators when economic times were good, but things are different now. “About half the companies declaring bankruptcy right now are owned at least in part by private equity,” said Valladares. “The default rates have gone up a lot.” here  

“The optics aren’t good” right now for large payouts, said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a former analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who now trains bankers and regulators through her consulting firm, MRV Associates Inc. “The more you reward the big lenders, the big traders, they take on more risk,” which would attract criticism, she said. here

While the US settlement requires the bank to make improvements on its compliance controls, Goldman managed to avoid any obligation of having a government-appointed monitor to oversee its compliance department, which had been an earlier priority for prosecutors and would have added enforcement heft to the probe’s resolution. “I would have insisted on having this imposed on Goldman,” said Rodriguez Valladares. “Having an independent outside monitor could expose weaknesses in their controls in multiple areas of the bank. Without an independent monitor, regulators and investors will never know all the details of how Goldman got away with this scandal.”

“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has really been gutted [under the Trump administration],” said Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, a capital market consultant and trainer who works with banks on risk and management issues. “The CFPB was never anything that the Republicans wanted. They fought it hard when it was going to be part of Dodd-Frank, and then when the law passed, they have fought its design, mission, its objectives every step of the way.”

“They (Moody’s) really are putting all of these coastal municipalities on notice. And it’s not just the municipalities. Importantly, they’re putting the states on notice,” says Mayra Rodriguez Valladares, managing principal of MRV Associates, a bank and capital markets consulting firm. States with large coastal populations and economies face credit risks over a multi-decade horizon because of a weaker economy, increased maintenance costs and lost tax revenue, the report states. That’s going to be particularly hard on financially stressed states like New Jersey, Valladares says.”