Bankers usually salivate over a chance to grow loans and diversify beyond real estate. So why have only 36 banks signed on for BancAlliance, a co-op designed to give them a shot a bigger commercial loans?

Washington Federal Inc. in Seattle said Wednesday that its fiscal-year first-quarter earnings jumped 36% from a year earlier, to $33.4 million, due to lower credit expenses.

The CFPB can and should impose safeguards against predatory payday lending institutions. And big banks should take heed and stop providing these lenders with lines of credit.

Two GOP senators took strong exception to recent suggestions by Fed officials that more should be done to fix the U.S. housing market.

CINCINNATI – Emery FCU said it closed its downtown branch after First Financial Bancorp, the building’s owner, declined to renew its lease.

For all the talk about legal challenges to the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the American Financial Services Association, which represents nonbank consumer lenders, has no intention of stepping into the fray.

The Dodd-Frank Act in general, and in particular its favorite child, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, represent sharp political disputes, as now with bypassing the Senate by the "recess" appointment of its director.

FARMINGVILLE, N.Y. – Teachers FCU, which moved into a new headquarters in nearby Hauppauge in November, has sold its old offices here for $4.6 million.

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. has quietly ceased filing lawsuits to collect consumer debts around the nation, dismissing in-house attorneys and virtually shutting down a collections machine that as recently as nine months ago was racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in monthly judgments.

Three months after putting its "forward" mortgage origination business on the block, MetLife announced Tuesday it had shut the operation down.

Michael Williams, the president and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, announced plans to step down as soon as a successor can be appointed, according to a company filing issued Tuesday to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Intuit is taking its GoPayment mobile card reader to Canada and is redesigning the product to make it more appealing to use.

W. Edmund Clark, the president and chief executive of Toronto-Dominion Bank, on Tuesday said the down economy should not keep his Toronto-based bank from continuing to grow profits in the U.S.

The retired director of the Center for Consumer Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee says it is unknown if the cap on debit interchange fees will ultimately benefit consumers.

PHH, the nation's largest private mortgage company, has been notified by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it is the subject of an investigation into potentially improper reinsurance payments.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday disclosed a written agreement with Gold Canyon Bank in Gold Canyon, Arizona.

Peggy Twohig, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's associate director for nonbank supervision, canceled her appearance at a bank lawyers' conference "at the last minute," the conference organizers said Tuesday.

Improving credit quality and continued low funding costs lifted Jacksonville Bancorp Inc.'s fourth-quarter profit 5% from the same period in 2010, to $774,000.