Retail & Commercial

A former director at Pinnacle Financial Partners who pleaded guilty to insider trading agreed to pay a heftier fine after a judge rejected the initial penalty as being too low.

Banks and data aggregators agree that screen scraping is a practice probably best left behind. In the coming year, the two might get better at sharing data via APIs.

First Republic Bank in San Francisco has bought Gradifi, a two-year old firm that works with small and large companies to help their employees pay down student debt.

Banks aiming to market internally developed products to other banks are also taking steps to become better vendors. Leader Bank, for instance, took more than a year to get its technology and staffing up to snuff before pitching its rent-payment program.

Bankers who are working to transform their institutions for the digital age have a new resource for networking and education.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce stands by its cash-and-stock bid to buy U.S. lender PrivateBancorp and is willing to wait out a market rally to complete the deal, Chief Executive Officer Victor Dodig said.

While other banking laws may be headed to the chopping block, the Community Reinvestment Act can address the needs of communities defined by their economic struggles.

In a move to boost recruitment and retention while keeping up with the corporate Joneses, American Express said it will offer 20 weeks of paid leave to any U.S. employee of either gender who has a child through any means, including adoption and surrogacy. Birth mothers will get an additional six to eight weeks of paid medical leave on top of that.

A New Jersey investor has received approval from the Federal Reserve to significantly boost its stake in MSB Financial in Millington, N.J.

Manufactured housing advocates are "guardedly optimistic" that the Federal Housing Finance Agency will soon issue a long-awaited final rule that they hope will expand the secondary market for mobile homes.