Retail & Commercial

A new proposal to allow the Small Business Administration to offer credit directly would pull customers away from community lenders, writes the head of a credit union trade group.

With its agreement to buy KS StateBank’s residential mortgage operation, Kansas-based Armed Forces is going all in on home lending.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has raised “certain regulatory concerns” about Blue Ridge Bankshares, delaying its combination with FVCBankcorp well into next year.

Despite some bumps in the early days of the Paycheck Protection Program, small businesses report that they had positive experiences with lenders. Savvy banks are channeling the good vibes to generate more revenue from a sector that has sometimes been overlooked.

Hispanic adults are underbanked compared with their white counterparts, according to the Federal Reserve. Challenger banks such as Tend and Viva First are reaching out to this population with bilingual services and low-cost money transfers.

Companies using only a person’s name and not other identifiers to screen job and tenant applications can produce inaccurate information, according to the bureau. The agency's advisory opinion said such practices violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Under the country's buyout rules, Carlyle now has until Dec. 2 to announce whether or not it will make a firm offer for the company.

The $323 million acquisition would give the Indiana bank a presence in affluent Oakland County and in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.

OceanFirst Financial in New Jersey has agreed to pay $186 million to buy Partners Bancorp, which owns two banks that operate in the Washington suburbs and surrounding areas.

Digital upstarts like Square, Stripe and PayPal are invading community banks' turf by appealing to local merchants with a mix of electronic payments and lending. Small banks are fighting back by leaning into digital services while maintaining their personal touch.