Retail & Commercial

Great Southern Bancorp (GSBC) in Springfield, Mo., beat analysts' estimates in the third quarter by reducing expenses and improving credit quality.

FirstMerit Corp. (FMER) in Akron, Ohio, earned $40.7 million in the third quarter, up 16% from the same period a year ago, due largely to its recent acquisition of Citizens Republic Bancorp in Flint, Mich.

Foundations Bank in Pewaukee, Wis., has made it official with interim leader John Hazod.

The two cities join New York, L.A. and other cities in trying to force the banks that hold municipal deposits to make more loans in low-income neighborhoods. Some industry officials oppose them, while others welcome them.

Efforts to revive the private-label mortgage-backed securities market were dealt a blow Tuesday when Shellpoint Partners, the firm backed by the mortgage-bond pioneer Lewis Ranieri, said it would withdraw a proposed securitization and instead sell its jumbo loans to the highest bidder.

Blacks and Hispanics are likely to find it more difficult to obtain credit or face paying higher prices when the "qualified mortgage" rule goes fully into effect, a process that could take up to seven years.

Los Angeles-based Wilshire Bancorp (WIBC) said this week that it had a third-quarter profit of $11.3 million, largely due to steadily improving credit quality and net gains on loan sales.

Aaron’s Inc., a national, Atlanta-based rent-to-own retailer, agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it knowingly played a direct and vital role in its franchisees’ installation and use of software on rental computers that secretly monitored consumers including by taking webcam pictures of them in their homes.

The new qualified-mortgage rule is pressuring vendors of loan origination systems to work with lenders to re-code their systems. There's a lot of work to be done before the Jan. 10 deadline.

As Fexco and First Data demonstrated their futuristic ATM concept, they emphasized that the bank is at the heart of the offering. And as Lamassu demonstrated a similar device for bitcoin users, a very different message came across.