Payments startups may be fast and smart, but banks have compliance know-how, an established customer base and physical branches that will help them hook customers on new products.

Like the Internet of the 1980s, today's payment systems are a mishmash of disparate, closed networks that cannot communicate with one another effectively. Distributed ledger technologies can solve this problem.

Receiving Wide Coverage ... UBS Dark Pool Probed: Swiss bank UBS disclosed on Monday the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, and the New York attorney general are investigating its dark pool operation, the Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank got an inquiry about high-speed trading, the Financial Times said. Barclays is already the focus of an Eric Schneiderman probe into whether it has deceived electronic trading investors. Dark pool trades are…

Studies of whether big banks enjoy implicit funding subsidies should take into account the effect of post-Dodd-Frank legislation and regulation, write Aaron Klein and Peter Ryan of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The solar industry is still developing, but Mercatus CEO Haresh Patel has suggestions for banks that want to get in on it now.

Receiving Wide Coverage ... JPMorgan Unloads: JPMorgan Chase agreed to sell a $1.3 billion debt and securities portfolio to Bain Capital's Sankaty Advisors, both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported. Chase's Hong Kong-based portfolio group, called the Global Special Opportunities Group, invests mainly in high-yield debt. Chase's sale of the unit is part of the wider trend of big banks unloading assets to comply with rules that they improve capital ratios and comply with the…

Airbnb’s recent rebranding featured personal narratives from employees and customers as well as stories that emphasized the company’s local roots. Banks can apply these lessons to their own marketing and product development, according to consultant Sam Maule.

Everyone these days is chasing Apple and Amazon.com. But are the strengths of these brands applicable to the banking industry?

Receiving Wide Coverage ... Foreign Banks to Face the Music: Banks outside the U.S. will have to deal with loan losses sooner under a new accounting rule issued by the International Accounting Standards Board. "Under the new standard, non-U.S. banks will have to book loan losses based on their expectation that future losses will occur, beginning in 2018," the Wall Street Journal reports. "That is expected to speed up the booking of losses and require greater…

Banks can ensure that their oversight teams help to propel the whole company forward by creating a thorough governance structure and hiring overseers with experience in key business lines.

Banc of California’s proposed acquisition of 20 Banco Popular branches offers an opportunity for regulators to ensure that underserved customers and communities are not left behind in bank deals, writes Paulina Gonzalez of the California Reinvestment Coalition.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Deutsche Bank's Troubles: The news of the New York Fed's stern rebuke to Deutsche Bank over its questionable financial data has industry observers making bets on the fallout. Deutsche Bank's chief financial officer, Stefan Krause, is now in the hot seat, according to the Wall Street Journal. Krause launched an effort to whip the bank's financial data into shape in 2010, but progress has been slow. Krause is far from the bank's…

Federal Reserve stress tests evaluate banks' ability to withstand severely adverse scenarios like the Great Recession. But the next downturn may pose different problems, according to Tony Hughes of Moody's Analytics.

You might think overhead expenses as a percentage of average assets decline as institutions get bigger. You'd be wrong.

Receiving Wide Coverage ... CIT Goes Big: CIT Group's plan to buy OneWest Bank for $3.4 billion is a big deal in more ways than one. Not only is it the industry's biggest purchase since 2012, CIT would become "the world's first intentionally created SIFI" with $67 billion in assets, as noted by the Journal's John Carney. Investors are cheering CIT chief John Thain's decision to leap over the $50 billion asset threshold because the deal…