The year's biggest storylines included an M&A revival, a reexamination of overdraft fees, a changing of the guard in Washington and the rise of new technologies. Here's a look back.

The Arkansas bank is working with 10 universities' athletic departments to create programs for women it hopes will one day join its ranks.

Worker shortages at call centers and rising concerns about account fees may have contributed to the industrywide decline, according to the authors of a new J.D. Power study. Capital One, which scored highest, benefited from its strength in digital banking.

The Pennsylvania bank run by Sam Sidhu is updating its platform to support real-time payments for cryptocurrency companies and will offer embedded finance and banking-as-a-service to fintechs.

The Louisiana-based Home has agreed to pay $66.6 million for the $445 million-asset bank.

FNB Bank in the hard-hit community of Mayfield lost its headquarters during the catastrophic storms. It and other financial institutions are aiding local residents who are now taking stock of the damage.

Goldman Sachs is boosting its wealth management and consumer banking business as part of a strategy outlined by Chief Executive David Solomon to make it less reliant on trading.

More than 180 community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions will receive the federal funds under a pandemic-era program. “It’s a lifesaver,” a credit union CEO said.

An investor who holds nearly 10% of Pacific Enterprise Bancorp shares urged others to oppose BayCom Corp’s $53 million acquisition offer, arguing that the price was too low. Despite this, a majority of both banks' shareholders voted in favor of the deal.

Its new widget allows consumers to initiate a payment from their phone's home screen instead of opening an app to potentially reveal their full banking details to prying eyes.

The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions' new campaign highlights $243 billion in fines slapped on Wall Street banks. The group says it's responding to political attacks, but the banking industry says NAFCU is trying to distract from criticism of its tax exemption.

The Atlanta bank said the deal will accelerate its small-business and commercial and industrial lending while expanding its presence in point-of-sale financing.

The $6.7 billion-asset Byline Bancorp plans to invest most of the savings into digital banking.

The financial technology firm Chime said customers can now deposit cash at more than 8,500 Walgreens Boots Alliance locations, another example of nonbanks pushing deeper into consumer finance.

A new survey of industry executives finds substantial interest in cryptocurrencies and mergers but anxiety about competition from large technology companies.

For the third time since the start of the pandemic, the Richmond, Virginia, company will close branches to contain costs in what it calls a “challenging macroeconomic environment.”

Driver Management says CEO Vernon Hill’s aggressive deposit-gathering strategy is not paying off for shareholders and wants the company to merge with a bank that would deploy the deposits into higher-yielding loans.

Facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled investor, the Arkansas company has released additional information about how it arrived at the $919 million price it’s paying for Happy Bancshares.

The company says that marketing its deposit products could help build deeper customer relationships, particularly with student loan borrowers. “We're not just a credit card issuer,” CEO Roger Hochschild told analysts.

The $85 million acquisition of Metro Phoenix Bank would more than double Alerus Financial’s loans and deposits in the nation’s fifth-largest city.