Capital One

Readers react to Capital One's massive data breach and The Bancorp's expansion in CRE securitizations, defend fintechs offering retirement plans and more.

Three GOP members of Congress have sent letters to the companies requesting staff-level briefings on the breach in which an ex-employee of Amazon Web Services illegally accessed data of more than 100 million people who had Capital One credit cards or had applied for them.

The hack prompts renewed concerns about security of data held in the cloud; lawmakers acknowledge that Facebook’s proposed Libra cryptocurrency could have applications for law enforcement.

A breach that compromises personal data of more than 100 million people is never good, but the company did follow some security best practices.

In what's being called "one of the largest-ever data breaches of a large bank," Capital One said a Seattle hacker gained access to the personal information of more than 100 million customers; Citigroup plans to cut hundreds of jobs in its global markets division and combine its equity trading and prime brokerage units.

Capital One Financial lost data from as many as tens of millions of credit card applications after a Seattle woman hacked into a cloud-computing company server, federal prosecutors in Seattle said.

After rising between 2016 and 2018, the card issuer's charge-off rates are now steady. The trend reflects both the impact of tighter underwriting standards and the continued resilience of U.S. consumers.

The credit card issuer reported expense growth that rose faster than net interest income during the second quarter.

Questioning whether core-banking technology is nearing a 'big shake-up'; Capital One keeps closing branches, even as rivals open them; FASB chair defends CECL, saying 'the benefits justify the cost'; and more from this week's most-read stories.

Other banks say they need to add branches to attract more deposits, but Capital One is sticking to its strategy of aggressively closing them and gathering the bulk of new deposits online.