Retail & Commercial

Tenants have threatened to suspend payments during the pandemic to pressure officials into providing rental assistance, but the effects on multifamily loans would compound concerns about servicers' liquidity and, ultimately, lenders' performance.

Reluctant to cancel what have become pipelines for developing talent, banks are delaying start dates or moving programs entirely online.

A combination of digital and cloud capabilities, data gathering and regulatory experience should give smaller banks an edge over nonbanks.

Banks, which previously shunned unsecured small-dollar lending, are now embracing the product because of the outbreak. It's just a matter of whether the shift is permanent.

In blue states in particular, governors and attorneys general are taking up the mantle of consumer protection during the coronavirus emergency, effectively adding another layer of regulation to the patchwork of state and federal oversight.

Ginnie Mae will begin taking requests for assistance from issuers who, having exhausted all other options, are having trouble advancing borrowers' principal-and-interest payments to investors amid the pandemic.

After opening-day fiasco, SBA upgrades lender portal with Amazon assist; West Virginia’s First State Bank closed by regulators; BofA offers emergency loans to borrowers first, freezing out depositors; and more from this week’s most-read stories.

Bank of America, which came under fire for prioritizing applications from existing small-business customers, asked a federal judge in Baltimore to reject a request in a lawsuit to temporarily bar it from employing the practice.

Bankers say they’re still trying to figure out if the Fed’s complex loan-buying vehicles will help them cater to the needs of midsize commercial customers hammered by the economic shock from the coronavirus outbreak.

The week-old Paycheck Protection Program will be opened up to sole proprietors and independent contractors on Friday.