Sterling Financial Corp. of Spokane said Monday that fourth-quarter earnings jumped 72% from a year earlier, to $15.5 million. Earnings for all of 2004 rose 60%, to $56 million.
Much of the growth stemmed from its January purchase of the $1.5 billion-asset Klamath First Bancorp in Klamath Falls, Ore.
Sterling's credit quality also improved last quarter. Nonperforming assets were a record low 0.2% of loans, versus 0.5% a year earlier.
The move comes about a year after rising delinquency levels prompted SBA to raise lender fees and tightened underwriting standards in its flagship 7(a) program.
Select ChatGPT users can now connect their bank accounts to the AI-powered chatbot for personal money management advice based on their financial history.
Suncoast Credit Union moved from one-time identity checks to monitoring members for the life of the account. It says fraud losses fell more than a third.
The $110 million settlement, which was mapped out last fall, requires Wells Fargo to establish a $100 million fund to provide downpayment and closing-cost assistance to eligible borrowers who live in or plan to buy a home in certain low- and moderate-income census tracts.
Whether red or blue, leaders share an affinity for battling fintech giants, as the liberal mayor is pressuring regulators to scuttle Western Union's plan to buy digital transfer Intermex, shortly following PayPal's 'DEI settlement' with the Trump administration.
Prashant Sharma, JPMorgan Payments' executive director of biometrics and identity solutions, spoke with American Banker about agentic commerce and how liability is shifting as a result of large language models.
