Miriam Cross

Sunwest Bank in Irvine, California, lets business customers open new checking accounts completely online, a technology challenge some large and regional financial institutions have yet to tackle.

The suburban New York bank says Skye, its conversational artificial intelligence assistant, is doing the work of 100 full-time employees.

Verizon Family Money is an app and prepaid debit card where children can spend under the limits set by their parents.

The New Jersey bank has been informally funding startups for more than a year. Now it has established Cross River Digital Ventures, which will focus on backing fintechs the bank wants to work with or ones that it feels will benefit the broader industry.

While most financial institutions have been focused on upgrading their digital channels, Andrews Federal Credit Union in Maryland listened to its customers and modernized its newest branch. Among the new features are video teller machines, touch screens offering online and mobile banking tutorials and a game area for children.

A new public-private network is pursuing a more comprehensive approach than other states to cultivate a strong financial technology industry by uniting banks, insurance companies, startups, government agencies, investors, universities and students.

A crop of budgeting apps and challenger banks, including Qapital, Honeyfi and Zeta, are enhancing joint accounts by adding communication tools and other features to help couples manage their finances.

The regional bank wanted to make more timely and relevant offers to its customers, especially in the realm of online and mobile banking. It worked with several vendors on a system to analyze customers’ activity and push out personalized recommendations.

Nearly a quarter of Black business owners seeking Paycheck Protection Program loans last year applied to fintechs — not far behind the percentage that turned to community banks, according to a New York Fed study. Deepening those new relationships could be a major source of growth for online lenders.

The card network's Fintech Partner Connect, which was previously available only in Europe, provides a curated list of companies that Visa clients, including banks, can consult for help opening accounts or aggregating customer data.

Huntingdon Valley Bank in Pennsylvania and First Savings Bank in Indiana are among the banks extending their relationships with software providers to make small-business lending more efficient after the Paycheck Protection Program is phased out.

The pandemic was certainly a factor, but the Mississippi company says its decision to concentrate interactive teller machines in drive-through lanes and retrain employees who appear on-screen made a big — and potentially lasting — difference.

Companies from Bank of America to PlainsCapital have ditched dull webinars and found more engaging ways to train workers to show empathy to clients and explain bank programs.

Daylight, a digital banking platform for the LGBT community, uses its customers’ preferred names on debit cards rather than their legal names. Through a new social media campaign, the company is encouraging the American Bankers Association and its members to do the same.

In partnership with the startup Hope Trust, the Chicago bank is piloting tools that will help people with disabilities, their families and caregivers manage their finances, government benefits and medical care.

Other banks soured on their AR experiments, but Ally Financial says the technology has yielded higher-balance deposit accounts — and heavier social media engagement — in marketing campaigns.

Challenger banks like Spiral and Greenwood Financial make charitable giving easy through their apps to build stronger relationships with socially conscious customers.

Kearny Bank in New Jersey and four other banks were struggling to manage escrow accounts where the rules vary widely between industries and states, so they teamed up on a tech solution.

The Massachusetts community bank, which rebranded last summer, landed on affiliate marketing as one cost-effective way of attracting choice customers to its business checking and crypto banking capabilities.

The custody service provider, which will maintain a New York license in addition to its national charter, is one of several cryptocurrency companies to apply to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.