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An executive from Regions Financial said recently that his bank plans to pad fee income by expanding into syndication of low-income housing credits. The comment shed light on an increasingly competitive business — and reminded the world again how eager banks are for even incremental boosts to revenue.

The federal agency expressed skepticism about industry-developed standards Thursday, suggesting that there is currently no way to enforce the rules or punish bad actors.

The clock is ticking to amend Dodd-Frank Act regulations before consumers in rural communities run out of borrowing options, community bankers from Kansas and Oklahoma told a House panel on Thursday.

Many financial criminals are switching to a more sophisticated kind of identity theft in which they open accounts based on stolen identities, or on composites of information stolen from different people.

The City of York, Pa., has partnered with MuniServices LLC, a business of PRA Group Inc., to provide revenue discovery and recovery services.

Adli Dasuqi and his companies, American Handicapped Inc. and American Handicapped and Disadvantaged Workers Inc., agreed to settle FTC charges that they tricked consumers into buying household products on the pretext that the proceeds would help disabled people.

FirstMerit reached out to a foreign bank last fall in an effort to negotiate a sale, but the Ohio company eventually agreed to sell itself to Huntington Bancshares for $3.4 billion.

"The CFO's role is evolving from bean counter to enterprise value architect," says Aneel Delawalla, managing director for CFO & Enterprise Value at Accenture.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has given community banks and other small companies more flexibility to issue private stock, but even more flexibility should be granted to fulfill congressional intent.

WSFS Financial Corporation in Wilmington, Del., is looking to raise $100 million through the sale of notes and plans to use the proceeds for a range of purposes, including possible acquisitions.

Outstanding consumer credit, a measure of nonmortgage debt, rose by a seasonally adjusted $13.4 billion in April from March, according to the Federal Reserve.

Walk down your average street in this country, and you'll find it easier to take out a loan than buy a coffee. With 22,000 payday lending locations in the U.S., Starbucks would have to grow three times in size to compete. Since the 1990s, annual loan volume has bloated to an estimated $27 billion. That's a lot of coffee.

Farmers & Merchants Bancorp in Lodi, Calif., has agreed to buy Delta National Bancorp in Manteca, Calif.

With its very survival at stake, the San Francisco-based marketplace lender is balancing key priorities that are sometimes in conflict with each other.

Trustmark in Jackson, Miss., reduced its workforce by more than 6% by offering early retirement packages.

Wintrust Financial in Rosemont, Ill., is planning to raise about $160 million through a common stock offering.

Highlands Bancorp in Vernon, N.J., has raised $7.5 million to exit the Small Business Lending Fund.

Lenders are questioning the legal justification for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's putting a 36% annual percentage rate threshold in its payday proposal, claiming loans made at that rate are unprofitable. That figure has been the subject of intense debate in the past decade.

PNC Financial Services Group has been named the official bank of the University of Kentucky, its 50th such partnership with a college or university.