Banking

Betting the farm on record crop, livestock and dairy prices has turned into a losing investment for an expanding share of America's agricultural heartland. The level of debt to income is the highest in three decades, and growers are increasingly unable to make loan payments.

Aaron Vermut has resigned as chief executive of Prosper Marketplace, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Vermut stepped down last week but will remain a director at the San Francisco-based online lender, according to the report, which cites unnamed sources.

Wei Ke, a partner at consultants Simon-Kucher, discusses the psychology behind customers' choices, including the appeal of metal credit cards, the willingness to pay $450 a year for a card and the paralysis of too many options.

KeyCorp integrated First Niagara just a couple of months after the deal closed. CIO Amy Brady says coordination between business leaders and the tech team paved the way.

Summit State Bank in Santa Rosa, Calif., has hired a rival’s chief credit officer.

If there is one thing credit unions and banks can agree on with regard to the National Credit Union Administration's latest effort to revamp its field-of-membership rules it is this: a lawsuit is brewing.

The same incentives structure that encouraged bad behavior at the bank can be blamed for ethical mishaps in other industries as well as the government.

Midland States Bancorp in Effingham, Ill., has plucked its new chief financial officer from a much larger bank: Kevin Thompson, who joins Midland from Zions Bancorp., where he had been senior vice president of corporate finance since 2014.

The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web. Today: Paytm gets a boost from India's cash crisis; crooks could obtain payment details from adult dating site hack; Facebook adds analytics to bots; a web attack hits Russia's largest banks.

The president-elect faces major questions about credit access, affordable housing, the future of Dodd-Frank, and the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the extent to which he will act upon them remains unclear.

Trustmark in Jackson, Miss., has agreed to buy RB Bancorp. in Athens, Ala.

T Acquisition, an entity formed by A. Haag Sherman and the partners of Cain Watters & Associates, has agreed to buy the $207 million-asset parent of T Bank for $40.5 million, based on the seller's number of shares outstanding at Sept. 30.

Optimism is running high in banking after the presidential election, as many bankers see Donald Trump's promises to lower corporate taxes and weaken regulations as potential boons for the economy and their bottom lines. Others, though, doubt Trump would push through or even endorse meaningful regulatory reform and are wary of his protectionist rhetoric. Here's what some bankers have to say to the president-elect.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's contentious rulemakings on arbitration and payday lending may be in jeopardy with the change in administrations and continued GOP control of Congress.

On Dec. 7, Dwolla will drop its consumer-facing applications like its mobile app and Dwolla.com

Community banks in the Pacific Northwest and New England completed acquisitions late in the week, and the TIAA-EverBank deal has moved a step closer to reality.

Facebook has disabled so-called ethnic affinity filters from housing, credit and employment advertising following mounting criticism that the practice allowed marketers to discriminate against minorities in violation of fair housing and civil rights laws.

Banks like SunTrust are looking to tech as a way to gain an edge in commercial lending, an area of banking where innovation has long been lacking.

Affirm, which has raised $525 million since launching in 2012, would like to expand its services and begin taking deposits.

Industry forecasts for 2017 mortgage volume assumed a continuation of current housing and economic policies under a Hillary Clinton administration. But with Donald Trump's win, analysts are sorting out what, if any, adjustments are needed to those projections.