Columbia Financial International Inc. announced Wednesday it is awarding $50,000 in grants to the collection industry to be used for education in Fair Debt Collection Practices Act regulations.

Connecticut regulators have fined the head of a Native American tribe and the two payday loan companies it owns a total of $1.5 million for allegedly violating a state cap on interest rates.

Heritage Oaks Bancorp in Paso Robles, Calif., has hired a veteran banker to fill a newly created post.

The ideal digital bank would respect customers' privacy and relate to them as human beings while offering an array of simple, easy-to-use mobile and online apps.

WASHINGTON — Two officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have been named into key roles, the agency confirmed Tuesday.

Investors' demands that the country's biggest bank produce better earnings amid costlier regulations are prompting fresh cries to break up JPMorgan Chase.

The prepaid card issuer Green Dot has promoted Kuan Archer to become its chief operating officer.

The White House announced Tuesday that it will nominate academic and former community banker Allan Landon to one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board.

U.S. bankruptcy filings totaled 910,090 in 2014, a 12% drop from the 1,032,572 filings in 2013, according to data from American Bankruptcy Institute, provided by Epiq Systems Inc.

Utah-based SecurityNational Mortgage Co. has agreed to a monetary settlement of a claim by Bank of America that it sold the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender defective mortgage loans.

The Colorado Attorney General's office reports that more than 165,000 state residents owed $56 million to payday lenders at the end of 2013 and the number of people taking out such loans is rising, according to an annual report.

Banks' post-crisis flight to caution has drawn comparisons to low-risk public utilities, but some institutions are seeing opportunities to take new risks again under the watch of new regulation.

Gliph is combining its secure messaging app with its Bitcoin payment capabilities to form an online and mobile app, called Gliph Marketplace, to compete with Craigslist.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday named Michael Dean as the director of the agency's Atlanta region. He had been serving as acting director of the region since April.

Jimmy Dunne, a senior managing principal at the Sandler O'Neill, recently discusses the state of bank M&A, the importance of size and scale and why he never wants to take his New York investment bank public.

First Merchants in Muncie, Ind., has agreed to acquire C Financial in Columbus, Ohio.

The hunt for scale has long been one of the chief reasons for dealmaking, but Jimmy Dunne, senior managing principal of Sandler O'Neill, says that today's operating and regulatory environment shows the true need to find efficiency through size.

The regulatory environment for small deals is improving as regulators see how consolidation can help move the industry further away from the crisis, says Jimmy Dunne, senior managing principal of Sandler O'Neill.