Jon Prior

Four companies — Regions Financial, MUFG Americas Holdings and the U.S. arms of the Royal Bank of Canada, BMO Financial— felt they had something to prove to the Federal Reserve after being assigned higher capital buffers than most of their peers last year. Will their decisions pay off for shareholders?

Splash recently raised $44 million from investors. It plans to use the funds to aid small institutions that lack the resources to build their own loan platforms but are flush with deposits and looking for new lending opportunities.

In a reversal of a Trump-era decision, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says it has the legal authority to test lenders for potential violations of a law protecting military borrowers.

Inventory shortfalls continue to constrain commercial lending, while the savings glut is holding back consumer borrowing, industry executives say. The good news: At some banks, pipelines are at or above pre-pandemic levels.

The bank has its eye on younger cardholders who are ready to spend more heavily now that pandemic restrictions have eased.

Fitch says it will be weighing failures of management standards and practices at banks more heavily when considering possible downgrades. ESG advocates are cheering the development.

The San Francisco company has promoted or hired several bankers to steer growth in retail and commercial banking operations just months after completing its purchase of Radius.

Even though industry economists and Federal Reserve officials expect the recent price surge to wane, some big-bank executives are expressing concern about the risk of an inflationary spiral hindering the recovery from the pandemic recession.

Ally and Huntington are the latest banks to take steps that will reduce revenue from customers who spend money they don’t have. The moves come at a time when technological, regulatory and social forces are converging to encourage change.

The heads of the six largest banks aimed to promote their COVID-19 relief in testimony to the Banking Committee. Democrats said their efforts were insufficient while Republicans criticized the executives for taking public stances on issues like climate change and voting rights.