Retail & Commercial

The consumer lender Oportun is rolling out a product designed to combat overdraft fees.

Beach Community Bank in Fort Walton Beach will be sold for $100 million once its holding company goes through bankruptcy, according to a local news report citing the bank.

A plan to bring in banks was created right after last summer’s hurricane devastation, but the magnitude of those storms, government dawdling on the issue and lenders’ reluctance to participate are key reasons zero loans have been made under the program.

TriStar Bank in Tennessee says a shortage of appraisers is slowing down its commercial real estate lending and raising the cost of appraisals. The claim has outraged appraisers, who argue that the bank is simply trying to avoid paying their fees.

Critics argue that Community Reinvestment Act standards need to be more transparent, but creating more objective measures would require regulators to favor some types of loans over others.

The Seattle bank's improved loan yields offset higher expenses tied to Bank Secrecy Act remediation. Washington Federal had to delay a pending acquisition after issues emerged with its anti-money-laundering compliance.

The acting director wants to gut the agency, which would harm both consumers and entrepreneurs.

Resourceful crooks will relentlessly probe systems, processes and people until they find a weakness or an opportunity. That weakness is the magnetic strip that still exists on all EMV cards, according to Nathan Horn-Mitchem, senior vice president and chief information security officer at Provident Bank.

Bank of America plans to stop lending to companies that make assault-style guns used for nonmilitary purposes.

If banks with high loan-to-deposit ratios overpay for brokered and promotion-driven deposits to fuel loan growth, they run the eventual risk of a liquidity crunch in an era when deposits — and the economy itself — are expected to be more volatile.