Community banking
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is planning a crackdown on the interest rate markups that auto dealers add onto the cost of car loans. Although it's dealers who originate the loans, the CFPB lacks the authority to regulate them directly. Bankers fear that as a result the agency will turn its focus to holding them accountable for monitoring loans made by the dealers with whom they work.
-
Lending to small and mid-sized enterprises and fee businesses like wealth management are the key to Zions Bancorp.'s growth plans, says its CEO Harris Simmons.
March 20 -
Top bankers went out of their way to praise the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its Director, Richard Cordray, at American Banker's Retail Financial Services Conference. Despite the happy talk, they stopped short of calling for the GOP to end its opposition to the bureau or for Cordray's directorship to be made permanent.
March 15
-
Over 40 million Americans are under- or un-banked. Operation HOPE Chief Executive John Hope Bryant discusses how banks can make customers out of this under-served market and do well by doing good in the process.
March 13 -
As banks struggle to find new sources of profitable business, are some making risky loans, delving into areas where they have little experience or are otherwise stretching in ways that they will eventually regret.
March 12 -
With fatter margins than high-end corporate banking and customers who are more interested in relationships and service than negotiating the lowest price, the commercial middle market is the industry's sweet spot, says consultant and executive recruiter Rod Taylor.
March 7 -
With banks suffering a squeeze on consumer banking profits, the question for institutions large and small is whether emerging mobile and other services can ever make up for declining revenues elsewhere.
March 6 -
There's an oversupply of old-fashioned branches, and banks don't know what to do with them, says industry consultant and executive recruiter Rod Taylor.
February 28 -
Will the Financial Stability Oversight Council be successful at spotting threats before they cause a financial crisis or will it instead create "regulatory hazard" in the form of a false sense of security?
February 21 -
Even as the financial crisis gives way to a recovery, everyone from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to comedian Stephen Colbert are demanding Washington get tough on banks and bankers. The question is what sort of action-if any-will follow.
February 20
