Miriam Cross

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.