Analytics

U.S. consumer credit card debt inched higher again for data released in February, but the average credit score remained the same as the previous month at 669, according to a March 10 report from Credit Karma Inc., a San Francisco-based company whose Web site tracks credit scores.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray is warning consumers that financial scams are on the rise in the state.

In another sign the economic recovery is slow-going, consumer bankruptcy filings surged 14% in February compared with a year earlier, according to a report by the American Bankruptcy Institute.

Small business owners do not expect any major improvement in the economy in the next few months, according to data from Discover Financial Services.

Identity theft and collections ranked first and second on the Federal Trade Commission's list of top complaints consumers filed with the agency in 2009.

A bitter fight is brewing in Florida over whether banks should be allowed to bypass court hearings in foreclosures.

A record number of Americans were in danger of losing their homes in the fourth quarter, even as new delinquencies declined, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported.

Bank of America Corp. said this week that late payments on credit card loans fell to 7.35% in January, the lowest in a year.

A Buffalo, N.Y. man who told investors he was a debt collector pleaded guilty Wednesday to bilking Citizens Bank of Buffalo, N.Y. and 17 investors in a fraud that cost the victims an estimated $440,000.

The Ulzheimer Group LLC and WebRecon LLC announced today a strategic partnership to provide credit expert witnesses with information on newly filed credit-related lawsuits using WebRecon's consumer litigant database.

In the race to recovery, several regional banking companies are distancing themselves from the pack.

Bank of America this week reported that it quadrupled the number of modified mortgages for its customers in the past month alone.

Banks saw modestly better prices for troubled loans last quarter thanks to stronger demand from vulture investors, home builders and other buyers.

U.S. job openings rose in December to 2.5 million from 2.4 million a month earlier, and the number of unemployed workers fell 73,000 to 15.3 million, according to the Labor Department in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Bad loans stopped soaring at large and midsize banks last quarter, but whether the credit cycle has bottomed out or is just taking a breather may depend on the success rate for loan modifications.

WASHINGTON — Bankers cannot wait for interest rates to start rising before deciding how they plan to handle it, regulators, executives and others said last Friday at a conference devoted to interest rate risk.

WASHINGTON — Bankers cannot wait for interest rates to start rising before deciding how they plan to handle it, regulators, executives and others said Friday at a conference devoted to interest rate risk.

Most of us would like to believe a new, brighter day has dawned. Part of creating that reality for banks requires improving collections systems to locate troubled loans that can be prevented from hitting the default dustbin, then helping overburdened staff reach a resolution that gets the borrower paying again. There's also a bit of amnesia that has to be cured.

Diversified Collection Services, a Livermore, Calif. collection agency, earned $5.3 million from the state of Louisiana for working on a recent tax amnesty initiative that generated more than $460 million for the state.

Consumers who bank or initiate retail purchases online already can secure those transactions through a variety of means, including passwords used only for the Web, card readers that plug into personal computers or challenge-response procedures that can include images they preselect.