Retail & Commercial

A credit review, along with concerns about certain change-in-control agreements, led Southwest Bancorp last summer to terminate a letter of intent to buy First Commercial Bancshares. The banks revisited the deal months later — at a lower premium — after First Commercial addressed the issues.

The former operators of an online payday lending scheme in the Kansas City area will be banned from the consumer finance business under a proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

A federal court has stopped the operations and froze the assets of a national debt relief telemarketing business that is under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Florida.

The Supreme Court's recent ruling that the disparate impact theory of liability can be applied to the Fair Housing Act means mortgage lenders must be even more vigilant in their ongoing testing and evaluation of business practices that could be interpreted as even unintentional discrimination.

A federal court has halted and frozen the assets of a nationwide credit card debt relief scam that allegedly stole millions of dollars from consumers.

Payment Alliance International, a Kentucky-based independent sales organization and ATM provider, has partnered with charitable fundraising firm Digital Processing Solutions to create a new "Digital Donations" program accessible through ATMs.

Moody's managing director Will Black questions whether marketplace lenders, which generally don’t retain credit risk, have enough incentive to maintain the quality of the loans they're facilitating. He also praises the P-to-P firms for publishing detailed loan-level data.

Premier Financial Bancorp in Huntington, W. Va., has agreed to buy First National Bankshares in Ronceverte, W. Va.

The operators of a scheme that allegedly bilked millions of dollars from consumers by trapping them into loans they didn't authorize will be banned from the consumer lending business under settlements with the FTC.

While hiring a chief risk officer is a given at the big banks, smaller institutions must weigh several factors and options in determining the risk leadership model that works for them.