Retail & Commercial

Gary Cohn, former head of the Trump administration’s National Economic Council and onetime top executive at Goldman Sachs, says technological changes will continue to make it harder for smaller financial institutions to compete and force many to be sold.

Over the past year, the Alabama bank has been developing new tools that analyze survey responses, phone interactions and social media posts to identify opportunities to improve digital offerings.

First City Bank of Florida had suffered “longstanding capital and asset quality issues” that were unrelated to the pandemic, the FDIC said.

Strong mortgage and capital markets activity helped offset credit costs and one-time items in the third quarter at Citizens Financial Group. In a period of low rates, CEO Bruce Van Saun says he’d like to buy more fee-generating businesses.

The auto lender says consumers’ skittishness about flying and using public transit during the pandemic has fueled a surge in demand for new and used cars. But executives remain wary of high unemployment and the potential for a rise in loan defaults.

USAA's regulatory troubles now include OCC fine, CRA downgrade; Citi CEO Michael Corbat and CFO Mark Mason dodged questions on cost of risk overhaul; PNC unlikely to buy a digital bank, CEO Demchak says; and more from this week's most-read stories.

The family-owned bank from the South and the New York commercial lender each would fill a clear need for the other. First Citizens would gain business lending expertise and an online deposit-gathering platform, and CIT would get the cheap deposits it coveted.

Amid the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies are taking a chance on innovative new technologies to keep their customers engaged.

The events of 2020 have only served to accelerate a number of potentially disruptive trends among consumers when it comes to banking and financial services — What does the emerging future of consumer and retail banking now look like?

The combined company would be the nation's 19th-largest bank with roughly $110 billion of assets.