Commercial lending

Brayden McCarthy of Fundera contends that unfair practices are commonplace in the online lending industry, and that self-regulation is needed to protect small-business borrowers.

The marketplace lender CommonBond announced that it has raised $35 million, which it plans to use to expand its operations across the country.

The San Francisco company hopes to lower its costs by driving out human intervention as much as possible. To get there, it has made the counterintuitive decision to locate its operations staff in one of the country’s most expensive cities.

Lead Bank in Kansas City, Mo., is poised to open a special branch designed for millennial entrepreneurs. Not only can these commercial customers bank in the techie, garage-like space, but they can actually work there, too.

Comerica has named Peter Sefzik market president for Texas, effective immediately. Sefzik succeeded Patrick Faubion, who was promoted to executive vice president of Comerica's Business Bank in July.

Iberiabank in Lafayette, La., has named Rick Pullum its Orlando, Fla., market president.

Marketplace lenders seek to disrupt traditional financial services with online platforms that connect borrowers to investors. But in real estate, this burgeoning sector has taken an approach that seeks to coexist with, rather than supplant, the traditional mortgage market.

Comerica has hired John Buchanan as its executive vice president of legal affairs.

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is calling for stricter regulation of marketplace lending.

Suncrest Bank is hoping that its team of experienced executives, combined with organic growth and acquisitions, will help more than double its assets in the next few years.

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finishes regulations dealing with mortgage data reporting, a similar set of requirements for small business loans is waiting in the wings.

American Banker readers share their views on the most pressing banking topics of the week. Comments are excerpted from reader response sections of AmericanBanker.com articles and from our social media platforms.

In a rapidly growing market outside the purview of the Truth in Lending Act or state usury caps, online lenders' rates and fees can be next to impossible to compare.

A growing number of fintech startups are appealing to the sensibilities of millennials by meeting social missions and, in some cases, by tying the amount of business they generate to the amount they give back to charity or to their customers.

Wall Street banks are scaling back their role in supporting debt sales that have helped online lending companies double their originations every year since 2010.

CIT Group in New York has formed a joint venture with the private equity firm TPG Capital to provide commercial lending.

FirstMerit in Akron, Ohio, has reached an agreement with Paychex to provide payroll-processing services.

Marketplace lenders and other alternative finance companiesshould be perceived not as a threat, but rather as a group of pioneers opening up opportunities for those banks that elect to buy, build or partner in this market.

Many community banks seem to have forgotten that they are most valuable for their ability to identify customers' pain and put an end to it. But fierce competition from fintech startups like Lending Club and Kabbage offers a reminder that they cannot afford to disregard this reality.

Freshly minted Capify combines subsidiaries in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, aiming to strike multinational partnerships.