The Texas banker, who chaired the ICBA during the financial crisis, feels much better about the regulatory environment for smaller banks. She just wishes that interest rates would finally rise.

The lobbying group's agenda typically includes a general session featuring top regulators. But with the ICBA's Washington Policy Summit two months away, the group opted to steer the focus of its annual convention toward education.

Lawmakers reluctant to offer community banks regulatory relief should consider the empirical evidence of how Dodd-Frank has hurt small lenders — and listen to the federal and state bank regulators calling for changes.

Banco Santander named a new chief executive for its unit that serves as the holding company for its U.S. retail bank, Santander Bank, and its subprime auto lender, Santander Consumer USA Holdings.

Eagle Bancorp in Bethesda, Md., is looking to raise funds to exit the Small Business Lending Fund.

Debt buyer Asset Acceptance Capital Corp. will lay off 125 employees this spring. The firm's parent company, Encore Capital Group, disclosed the layoff plans this week in a required filing with the state.

The U.S. Department of Education's plan to end contracts with five collection agencies that allegedly provided wrong information to borrowers is expected to result in 400 lost jobs at one of the agencies.

State Bank Financial in Atlanta has acquired Boyett Agency to serve as the foundation for a new insurance division.

An overlooked issue in the plan to reform Federal Home Loan bank membership could inadvertently jeopardize the local focus of the system by allowing insurance companies to apply for membership in any of the 12 districts.

Costco has picked Visa as its new payment card network and Citigroup as the new issuer of its cobranded credit cards.

PacWest Bancorp in Los Angeles has agreed to buy Square 1 Financial in Durham, N.C.

An audit of Ginnie Mae financials identified four "material weaknesses" and one "significant deficiency," primarily related to the accounting of $6.6 billion in defaulted loans made by the failed lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

Popular and FirstBank gained critical branches and deposits in a region where growth is hard to come by. Some observers said it could also benefit the island to have one less competitor.

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A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including Dodd-Frank's impact on small institutions, Fed chair Janet Yellen's handling of attacks on her staff and Bitcoin's public but pseudonymous ledger.

Hudson City Bancorp in Paramus, N.J., has been released from an enforcement action with federal regulators.

Embattled mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial faces up to $26 billion in damage claims by bondholders and a greater risk of being fired as a mortgage servicer on thousands of small, private-label trusts.

The $1.4 billion-asset company said in a press release Friday that it will allow Richard Lashley, a co-founder of PL Capital, to join its board.

Regulators have shut Doral Bank, ending a tumultuous decade for the Puerto Rican bank. The $5.9 billion-asset Doral was the fourth bank to fail this year and the biggest bank to be closed since the $11 billion-asset Westernbank in Puerto Rico was shuttered in April 2010.

The surprising part of a recent report on U.S. stress tests is not that Deutsche Bank and Banco Santander might fail, but that large banks manage to pass any country's stress tests at all.