First Niagara Financial Group Inc. climbed as much as 4.6 percent, the best performance in the KBW Bank Index, after senior managers, including Chief Executive Officer Gary Crosby, bought shares of the lender this week.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer's creative effort to give shareholders more power to nominate board candidates will be an uphill battle, but community banks are taking it seriously — and larger banks may ultimately have to do so, too.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

Pennsylvania regulators filed a lawsuit against an operation that allegedly ran an illegal online payday loan scheme. The suit names several collection agencies as defendants.

Nonbank acquisitions require a certain level of expertise, John Allison writes in his new book. In this excerpt, he discusses how BB&T views the insurance business and why he stuck with subprime auto finance when others bailed. Part 4 of 5.

John Hairston will stay in the newly combined role, while Carl Chaney plans to retire on Dec. 31. Hancock has been pressed by Wall Street in recent years to get more aggressive cutting costs after buying Whitney Bank.

An Orlando, Fla.-based operation that allegedly bilked seniors by using pre-recorded robocalls to sell supposedly free medical alert systems has agreed to shut down to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission and the Florida attorney general's office.

A U.S. Treasury Department pilot program involving taking over the collection of defaulted student loan accounts could mean the work eventually will be pulled from private debt collection agencies.

Fannie Mae has entered into deals with JPMorgan Chase and other companies that transfer some of the credit-loss risk on mortgage-backed securities to investors. Not only do these deals reduce the danger that taxpayers could be forced to cover the GSEs' losses, they may help make mortgages more affordable.

Royal Financial in Chicago has agreed to buy PNA Bank in Chicago.

Kim Kardashian may be an overexposed reality star, but she's also a tech entrepreneur with a short-lived past in the payments industry. And several companies in the Bitcoin space are repeating her biggest mistake by offering a plastic payment card.

New York financial regulator Benjamin Lawsky held up the deal shortly after it was announced in January, and regulatory and legal concerns had mounted since then.

Bank industry representatives initially panned the concept of the Postal Service offering retail banking products. But as the government official behind the idea has made clear that he is interested in collaboration with the private sector, attitudes have begun to change.

Iberiabank Corp. in Lafayette, La., was initially willing to pay up to $24 million more than what it eventually agreed to pay for Florida Bank Group in Tampa.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau slapped Franklin Loan Corporation with a $730,000 fine on Thursday for allegedly incentivizing loan officers to guide customers into mortgages with higher interest rates.

For the fifth year in a row, Quicken Loans is rated No. 1 by consumers in terms of customer satisfaction, according to a J.D. Power survey.

Trade groups press federal banking regulators to make the Basel III capital rule less onerous.

Wells Fargo plans to sell an $8.5 billion portfolio of federal student loans to Navient, the educational loan servicer that recently split off from Sallie Mae.

Transparency about the diversity of companies’ workforces can promote the hiring and advancement of women, while role models like Janet Yellen help pave the way for more female leaders.

First Artesia Bancshares in Artesia, N.M., has merged two of its banks.