A slower rate of price increases would boost the likelihood of an interest-rate cut that could expand loan demand and lower banks' deposit costs. A higher pace of inflation, however, could derail those catalysts.

Unity Bank in Clinton, NJ, now offers EV charging stations in a collaboration with Encore Energy Group; fintech Beneficient announced its agreement to acquire Puerto Rico-based Mercantile Bank; Trump named payments exec Jared Isaacman to run NASA; and more in this week's banking news roundup.

Primis Financial had to delay several reports to the SEC due to an accounting misclassification error, which raised the possibility that the bank's stock would no longer trade on Nasdaq. Executives say they're "optimistic about putting this behind us."

As the government shutdown stalls key housing programs, lenders are shifting tactics to keep loans moving and preparing for bigger challenges ahead.

The shutdown started with a flight into treasury bonds, putting downward pressure on financing costs, but several other developments slowed mortgage activity.

Consumer prices rose 0.4% in August, up from 0.2% in July, as weak job growth and lingering tariff uncertainty reinforce expectations for a September Fed rate cut.

As AI makes financial scams more and more convincing, banks would do customers a real service by allowing them to opt in to dual approval of transactions above certain dollar limits.

Passing a federally mandated stress test is table stakes in risk management. Banks need to be proactive about designing and implementing stress tests that consider a wide range of scenarios, with a particular focus on tail risks.

Know-your-customer rules are a longtime fixture of bank compliance regimes, but as autonomous AI "agents" increasingly access banking systems, new rules for verifying their status are desperately needed.