Despite their sinister-sounding name, dark pools of liquidity can be very beneficial to average investors by offering mutual funds and large institutional investors an efficient way to make large trades without impacting the market.

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Provident Financial Services Inc. has hired Alan D. Segars as vice president and investment management officer of its wealth management group.

Tech investors love fast-growing marketplace lenders like Social Finance, but Wall Street has taken a dimmer view of them. A huge equity fundraising round should allow SoFi to keep fueling rapid growth while remaining privately owned.

Banks have ramped up foreclosure activity in the past five months, with default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions at their highest levels in two years. It's a positive sign that banks are finally clearing out all the distressed loans still lingering from the housing crisis. Meanwhile, banks remain cautious about new lending, partly because of regulatory actions.

Bank repossessions of distressed homes hit a 30-month high in July, as financial institutions continue to work through the backlog of bubble-era loans.

It's long past time for the National Credit Union Administration to implement a risk-based capital standard, and the recently approved delay could hurt more than it helps.

The OCC and FDIC have moved in the right direction by proposing reforms to the Community Reinvestment Act. Now it’s time for the Federal Reserve to join.

The age of PINs and passwords are sadly not yet gone, but new devices and digital services will need more advanced authentication, says Fingerprints' Maria Philstrom.