Patty Kellerhals has had her share of mentors and role models over the course of her 41-year banking career, but few have influenced Commerce Bank’s head of retail banking more than her own mother.

American Banker announced its 16th annual ranking of the Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance.

Innovative. Influential. Impactful. The 25 female leaders in this ranking are skillfully navigating industry disruption and — in many ways — driving it as well.

Besides transforming her own bank, Stewart has left her mark more broadly on the industry through advocacy.

Over the past year, Centric Financial CEO Patricia Husic has made several big hires and added a 25,000-square-foot corporate office for the bank.

Amazon's voice assistant will soon be in cars and even microwaves, but banks have not yet proven to customers they can serve them with conversational tech.

"Normal system upgrade" knocks out SunTrust's online- and mobile-banking ops; "just a matter of time" before Amazon, Google enter mortgages; Wells Fargo looking for Tim Sloan's replacement?; and more from this week's most-read stories.

Sound Credit Union in Tacoma, Wash., has agreed to buy Bank of Washington in Lynnewood.

The San Juan company has largely recovered from the hurricane that hit a year ago, and it has made extensive preparations for future natural disasters. Yet its home market is still suffering from debt and net outmigration of residents.

Union Bankshares in Virginia has been adding executives from much larger competitors as it looks to compete more effectively with bigger banks

The Dallas company said a commercial client submitted falsified documents that inflated how much colloteral it had available.

The acquisitive company plans to buy Blue Hills Bancorp to boost its footprint in eastern Massachusetts.

When the Birmingham, Ala., bank was rethinking its branch strategy, it had to reconsider the role of its tellers. Ultimately, it decided to transition those workers to a more general banker role that emphasizes meaningful conversations with customers and continuous career progression.

The cuts are part of a broader effort to trim expenses by roughly $3 billion a year by 2020.

Seven other banks passed on a chance to bid on FCB Financial, perhaps showing the small pool of large buyers eager to make a big commitment to the Sunshine State.

The company said the move should address investor concerns about potential margin compression, slower loan growth and an economic slowdown.

Every month, from January to April of this year, there were roughly 3.2 billion attacks perpetrated by malicious code that infiltrated business' networks. Representatives of smaller financial institutions disputed the notion that they are one of the weak links in the chain.

All three credit unions hold less than $250 million in assets.

The beloved annual feature is back on Sept. 20 to highlight the magical and the mundane moments credit unions experience every day.

Edward Doherty is set to succeed Janice Houghton when she retires in November.