Retail & Commercial

Mortgage application volume experienced the largest week-over-week gain in more than six years, but despite the FHA's announced cuts to insurance premiums, interest in conventional loans was greater.

Keefe, Bruyette & Woods and Sandler O'Neill & Partners commanded the market for bank M&A advisory in 2014, according to data published Wednesday by SNL Financial.

A ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed a trial court's dismissal of a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act claim in Buchanan v. Northland Group Inc.

Small banks aren't disappearing-they're just getting bigger. Meanwhile, their large competitors are exiting business lines and selling off units. These changes suggest that regulators would be better off issuing rules based on lenders' level of complexity, relieving institutions that operate by a core banking model of unnecessary burdens.

Cream Group Inc., which operates as Oro Marketing, and its mastermind Sami Charchian have agreed to a permanent ban on telemarketing to settle FTC charges that they targeted Spanish-speaking women with false promises that they could make money reselling brand-name goods, such as Gucci and Ralph Lauren.

The holding company for 15 banks, which is approaching $20 billion in assets, has been testing cardless ATM transactions since the summer of 2013. Now, it is expanding the capability to dozens of machines — marking it the first institution in the U.S. to take the technology, powered by the vendor FIS, into production.

Pennsylvania defense attorney Nancy Raynor, sanctioned nearly $1 million when a defense expert made a prohibited remark about smoking during a lung cancer-related malpractice case, is now being told it's time to pay up.

Wells Fargo said fourth-quarter profit rose 1.8% as a strengthening U.S. economy boosted lending.

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank, said fourth-quarter profit fell 6.6% as fixed-income trading revenue dropped 23% and legal costs were about twice as high as some analysts estimated.

Jane Fraser, the CEO of CitiMortgage and head of Citigroup's U.S. consumer and commercial banking units, is handing responsibility for day-to-day global mortgage operations to her current mortgage lieutenant, CD Davies.