Finance

The accounts — which eschew paper checks and overdraft protection — appeal beyond the low-income customers they were intended for; lenders are embracing artificial intelligence systems to analyze more data to determine creditworthiness.

Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union returned $22 million to its members.

Bob Mahoney, CEO of Belmont Savings, called Jack Barnes after People's United agreed to buy a Connecticut bank. The banks announced their own merger agreement five months later.

The Sidney, Mont.-based institution distributed the payments earlier this week.

This is the second consecutive year that the South Dakota institution has paid out the patronage bonus.

Bank OZK's George Gleason, one of our community bankers to watch in 2019, needs to rein in the Arkansas bank's commercial real estate exposure to placate nervous investors.

Spirit Community Bank is the 15th bank to get the agency's approval this year. That list also includes Community Bank of the Carolinas, which was approved in early December.

An effort to increase awareness of the transition to a new benchmark rate, and nudge banks to start preparing, is expected to intensify in 2019.

James McLemore, one of our community bankers to watch in 2019, has more energy loans to purge and must exit the Small Business Lending fund and a BSA-related enforcement action.

After 10 years of conservatorship, the new year could finally usher in big steps toward housing finance reform.