FirstBank in Colorado unveiled an advertising campaign over the summer promising "Mortgages Made Easy," which focuses on the process of obtaining a mortgage, rather than the more common tactic of highlighting rates.

With backstage tours and VIP tickets, MasterCard shifts the customer reward focus from points accrual to unique experiences with it's Priceless Cities program. Events are designed to drive loyalty by offering something said to matter more than material goods.

Focusing on signs of improvement, community bankers sounded unusually cheerful; some investors thought unduly so. Bonnie McGeer reports from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods' conference.

Nearly half of U.S. banks and thrifts with $2 billion to $10 billion in assets had lower net income in 2010. In the aggregate, mid-tiers earned just $935 million last year. At least it was an improvement from an overall loss of $1.4 billion in 2009.

With trouble spots lacking potential acquirers, M&A activity in most markets is slow.

United Community Financial Corp. in Youngstown, Ohio, said late Wednesday that it would sell four branches in the western part of the state to a unit of Croghan Bancshares Inc.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said it believes that mortgage real estate investment trusts are beginning to look more like mutual funds and has initiated a review of their exemption from the Investment Company Act.

The consumer lender Springleaf Financial on Wednesday priced $242.7 million of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities at a yield of 4%, as expected, according to an investor.

Independent mortgage banking firms made an average profit of $575 per origination in the second quarter, a 66% gain from the first quarter — but a significant decline from two years ago when the average gain was $1,358.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. – NuVision FCU has sold its office building at 1155 Corporate Center Drive in Monterey Park, Calif., to International Union of Painters & Allied Trades for $4.8 million, or about $224 per square foot.

Some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners. Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

Not to be outdone by rivals in a month that has seen several new and retooled credit card rewards program announcements, Bank of America Corp. on Wednesday rolled out upgrades to a couple of its core cash-rewards cards.

Look closely at the structure of the First PacTrust deal for Beach Business Bank to see how deal negotiators are hedging against stock volatility. Expect to see more creative pacts like this one.

First PacTrust said it wants Beach Business Bank for it commercial loans after just announcing a deal for a mortgage operation.

Big bank margins have contracted for five consecutive quarters, and are poised to shrink again during the current period amid a continuing buildup of deposits and a flatter yield curve.

Strong opinions abound on the future of bank branches. Will branches be relevant 10 years from now? Will financial technology solutions be able to significantly disrupt the business of banking such that branches, at least as we know them today, become obsolete?

WASHINGTON — Banks are again urging policymakers to reject proposals that would allow credit unions to make more business loans.

Although both bankers and retailers spent thousands on lobbying over the cap on interchange fees for debit cards, campaign contributions cannot explain why 12 key senators switched their votes.

As Visa has been ramping up its promotion of one-time-use card data for security, Discover Financial Services is winding down its support of a similar technology. The key difference is that the system Visa is pushing is used at the point of sale, whereas the one Discover is discontinuing is used online.

Little has been done to buoy confidence that an economic recovery is at hand. A settlement of the investigations surrounding last year’s robo-signing scandal that, among other things, achieves widespread principal reduction commitments from major servicers, could change that — but only if done carefully.