American Banker Magazine - April 2018

The holding company for Union Bank — itself a unit of the Japanese giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group — is on a mission to double its size and become one of the nation's 10 largest banks. Under Steve Cummings, its first-ever American CEO, MUFG Americas has expanded middle-market lending and amassed $3 billion of consumer deposits through its new online bank. Is a splashy acquisition next?

Many of the companies in our inaugural Best Fintechs to Work For ranking share a willingness — even an eagerness — to involve rank-and-file staff in decisions about how the company is run.

Paddleboarding in the morning, assigned mentors, passion projects: How firms on our inaugural ranking of the Best Fintechs to Work For attract (and keep) top talent with Silicon Valley perks.

A community group has secured a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to probe banks’ small-business lending practices. It follows a 2017 pilot study in which the group found that white shoppers posing as business owners were three times more likely to be invited for follow-up appointments than their black counterparts and twice as likely to be offered help in completing loan applications.

Quicken Loans, Citizens Bank and Better Mortgage are refinancing loans using Airbnb income as part of a pilot project with Fannie Mae.

With the state only months away from allowing the sale of pot for recreational use, its top cannabis regulator is urging policymakers to consider creating a public bank to provide services to growers and dispensaries that might otherwise have nowhere else to bank.

The founders of Seed are hoping to bring to small-business banking what their previous company, Simple, brought to personal financial management: much-easier-to-use technology.

Neptune Financial plans to use technology to improve the efficiency in making loans to companies with $10 million to $100 million in annual revenue.

U.S. fintechs attracted $5.8 billion in the fourth quarter as institutions sought an AI edge.