Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac updated their representation and warranties frameworks in a move designed to encourage mortgage lenders to ease credit restrictions by limiting repurchase requirements.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a proposal Thursday that would institute new foreclosure protections for consumers after the agency found its previous mortgage rules didn't go far enough.

The moves by two of the industry’s biggest players come as regulators are pressuring lenders to offer more relief to distressed borrowers.

Fraternity Community Bancorp in Baltimore has agreed to add a director recommended by activist investor Joseph Stilwell.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray highlighted the role of banks and other payment system operators to ensure proper treatment of customers using transaction networks.

There is a lesson for bankers in the recent decision by Bitcoin ATM provider Robocoin to stop using biometric authentication on its teller machines.

Banks and other traditional payment companies need to keep an open mind when assessing the market today as new entrants build systems to disrupt the old models, said Christine Cumming, first vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The founder of DECA Financial Services, once a fast-growing debt collection agency in Fishers, Ind., is facing federal charges in a $5 million fraud case.

The once-distressed parent of First National Bank of Howell is on the road to recovery. For attorney Stanley Dickson, the comeback means more than a return on investment. It allowed him to save a bank that has been there for his family for over four generations.

Alternative lender FastPay, which specializes in lending to digital media startups, received $15 million from newly formed Oak HC/FT, a $500 million growth-equity fund that invests in health care and financial technology.

Poage Bankshares in Kentucky disclosed that its chairman has died.

The overly complex Dodd-Frank Act came about because policymakers failed to tie regulation and regulatory structure together effectively. The next step in financial reform should be to simplify — and perhaps consolidate — regulatory processes.

Corinthian Colleges Inc., the higher-education company accused by the CFPB of fair debt violations, announced Thursday that it has agreed to sell campuses in 17 states to an organization that also came under fire this year for collection practices.

Regulators are threatening more action to force improvements in the behavior of bank employees, but executives are shooting back that the task is easier said than done and that change has to come from inside and not through supervisory orders.

Michael Levitis, the owner of a New York debt settlement company, was sentenced to nine years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty in a fraud scheme that law enforcement officials said victimized 1,200 people with false promises of relief from credit card companies and banks.

Hudson Valley Holding in Yonkers, N.Y., has agreed to sell A.R. Schmeidler & Co., an investment adviser unit, to Pine Street Asset Management.

Pacific Continental in Eugene, Ore., has agreed to buy Capital Pacific Bancorp in Portland, Ore.

Hotly competitive and entirely opaque, art banking thrives in the world's last unregulated market.

The heads of banks are resistant to analytics and data-driven decisions in general, according to a new survey, yet embrace them in limited uses.

Only eleven months after cheering Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin Watt's confirmation, Senate Democrats are fed up with the pace of reforms at the agency.