Mobile banking features that encourage customers to set savings goals can supercharge customer loyalty and attract new primary banking customers. A renewed focus on consumer savings may also help banks offset the decline in deposits reported at many banks in 2023.

Bank CEOs are eyeing a near-term peak in deposit costs as the Fed perhaps moves closer to cutting interest rates. But the pressures they've faced this year as depositors ask for more compensation may not die down right away.

Internet-based banks are siphoning deposits away from urban centers in the U.S. and, unlike brick-and-mortar banks, face no requirement that they loan money back into those communities.

The 130-year-old Warsaw Federal Savings & Loan achieved a minority status after retooling its board this summer. Its CEO, who is also new to the job, has no plans to slow the pace of change at the depositor-owned bank.

Banks branches continue to shutter through October; First Carolina onboards fintech partner BM Technologies; ICBA announces its 2024 accelerator companies; and more in the weekly banking news roundup.

The Georgia-based bank says it's expanding its relationship with GreenSky, a home improvement lender that Goldman Sachs bought in 2022 but put up for sale a year later. The deal will bring a one-time revenue boost and a recurring fee income stream.

The bank in Richmond, Virginia, failed to properly disclose its overdraft practices to roughly 8,500 consumers who enrolled by phone or in branches from 2017 to 2020, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The company admitted no wrongdoing.

Frustrated by its inability to overcome loan-servicing mistakes that triggered three separate regulatory consent orders, Discover Financial Services elected to sell its student loan business. "When we looked at it, we have perennial issues in our ability to service that portfolio," a top executive said.

Equity, based in Wichita, Kansas, has agreed to buy the parent company of the Bank of Kirksville. The combined company would have $5.4 billion of assets and 74 branches, including 23 in Missouri.

Too few lenders are underwriting unsecured consumer debt, which could help borrowers pay down credit card balances with little risk to lenders.