Banking

NEW YORK — Despite crippling amounts of snow from behemoth winter storm Jonas, most credit unions are operating relatively normally, according to leagues in some of the hardest-hit states in the Eastern U.S.

PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh has tapped Karen Larrimer to lead its retail banking division.

Ag lenders enjoyed solid credit metrics and an increase in farms loans in 2015. Those results could come under pressure this year, requiring bankers to become more vigilant in talking to their agricultural clients.

Discover Financial Services is making an aggressive new bid for consumers who can't qualify for a traditional credit card.

Regulators and alarmists are targeting a key source of financing on which some of the best-known American companies rely.

The $465 million-asset bank in Athens, Ga., has named Rhodes McLanahan CEO and president.

Maria T. Vullo, formerly New York's executive deputy attorney general for Economic Justice, was nominated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to serve as superintendent of a state agency that has played a key role in cracking down on debt collectors.

Visa has nabbed an executive from media company Time Inc. to be its chief marketing and communications officer.

Visa has nabbed an executive from the media company Time Inc. to be its chief marketing and communications officer.

Nomorobo, a startup that blocks telemarketing calls, earned an endorsement from telecom giant Time Warner Cable Inc., which recently announced it will provide its phone customers easy access to its third-party robocall-blocking service.

United Community Financial in Youngstown, Ohio, has agreed to buy James & Sons Insurance.

Opus Bank in Irvine, Calif., has agreed to buy Pensco Trust Co. in San Francisco from Pensco Services.

The way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is regulating the auto finance industry's relationships with dealers is simply wrong — both legally and ethically — according to Blair Evans of Baker Donelson. It's also directly counterproductive to its goal of protecting consumers, she says.

In South Africa, parents who default on school fees are increasingly being turned over to debt collectors to help debt ridden high schools.

Calls with analysts to discuss the fourth-quarter results were dominated by questions about energy exposure, efficiency and the growing worry about when the next credit cycle may begin. Still, some banks managed to get in a few thoughts about how technology is reshaping their businesses.

Imagine offering a borrower a better rate or a bigger loan because a handful of his buddies say he is an upstanding guy who they are so confident will pay back his loan that they are willing to cover a portion of it if he doesn't.

There have been many reports of bitcoin's demise, but the fate of one currency doesn't eliminate the many use cases that virtual currency could still address in payments, according to Evan Duffield, a Phoenix-based developer and founder of the virtual currency Dash.

Discover says it will help consumers seeking to establish or rebuild a credit score by expanding the availability of its Discover It Secured Credit Card, which offers the cash-back rewards and security measures of its mainstream cards.

The Secured It Card requires a security deposit but also offers cash-back rewards and other perks normally associated with Discover's traditional cards.

Farmers Capital Bank in Frankfort, Ky., plans to extinguish $15 million of subordinated debt. The $1.8 billion-asset company expects to record a $4.1 million pretax gain during the first quarter from the transaction.