Retail & Commercial

Traditional bankers could be forgiven for hoping that the direct banks would have gotten their comeuppance by now. But the branchless (or nearly branchless) upstarts look to be very much on the ball.

Median deposits per branch have jumped significantly since 2007 for many banks.

The qualified mortgage rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could be disruptive to the FHA single-family program, so the Department of Housing and Urban Development is starting the process of issuing its own QM rule.

United Community Financial in Youngstown, Ohio, has added an advisor to the company to its board.

United Financial Bancorp in West Springfield, Mass., is closing a pair of Connecticut branches just months after buying them.

Bankers must concentrate on achieving greater efficiencies, stop focusing on short-term goals and strike the right balance between unacceptably poor compliance practices and unattainable perfection.

Merchant-funded rewards provider fisoc hopes the communal element of Facebook mixed with special card offers can drive repeat payments volume for small merchants focused on their local communities.

The banking industry's pace of expansion, which had shown signs of accelerating in late 2012, appears to have lost momentum.

Darrell Green, an initial investor in the bank, enjoyed a Hall of Fame career with the National Football League's Washington Redskins.

Flushing Financial in Lake Success, N.Y. is now a bank. The $4.5 billion-asset company said Thursday that it had also merged Flushing Savings Bank and Flushing Commercial Bank to create a commercial bank chartered in New York.