Banking

Chemung Financial in Elmira, N.Y., has promoted Anders Tomson to president and chief operating officer. Tomson had been president of Chemung Financial's Capital Bank, the name the company uses in its Albany County and Saratoga County, N.Y., markets.

The federal government has taken the unusual step of suing a dead bank president's estate for repayment of bailout funds the bank received during the financial crisis.

The operators of a fraudulent collection scheme are banned from debt collections in a settlement of Federal Trade Commission charges that they bilked millions of dollars from Spanish-speaking consumers.

In nearly two decades of payday lending, Charlie Hallinan stayed one step ahead of state laws while amassing a fortune — one high-interest loan at a time.

Requiring brokers to come clean with customers about conflicts of interest sounds like an easy way to address biases. But disclosures are only effective if recipients understand how the conflict has influenced the advisor and have a way to correct that influence.

A Liverpool, N.Y. collection agency that allegedly engaged in threatening and abusive practices must close permanently and pay back $400,000 to debtors, according to a court order.

A computer malfunction that knocked out trading at the New York Stock Exchange for more than three hours Wednesday probably stemmed from a software update that went awry, said two people briefed on a preliminary review.

Late payments on home equity credit lines hit their lowest level in more than six years, defying warnings about the looming aftershocks of loose bubble-era lending standards.

The delinquency rate on loans backed by the value of consumers' homes hit a postcrisis low in the first quarter, according to the American Bankers Association.

Mortgage originators willing to help consumers overcome traditional financing hurdles can add more emerging segments of home buyers as clients.

Federal and state regulators said the $216 million settlement against JPMorgan Chase is a warning that they are not finished targeting firms that mishandle collections or improperly resell bad debts.

Business went on as usual at commercial banks as the New York Stock Exchange and other large businesses suffered outages. But the confluence of events served as an unnerving reminder of the cyber risks facing the industry.

Greg Carmichael, a former IT executive, has been tapped to lead Fifth Third Bancorp, a move showing the growing importance of technology in banks' operations. He'll have to find new ways to grow revenue as he succeeds Kevin Kabat, under whom profitability has sagged recently.

As technological problems forced the New York Stock Exchange to grind to a halt Wednesday, financial services insiders and observers weighed in on the vulnerabilities of increasingly electronic financial systems.

Several large banks, including Citi and Bank of America, have begun sharing proprietary code with fintech startups and others. The new level of openness brings benefit to both sides.

Paring back branch networks is a quick way to cut costs. But executives at large regionals are reluctant to make such cuts until they have found a way to thrive at other delivery channels.

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay more than $200 million to settle claims by federal and state authorities that the megabank wrongfully collected credit card payments on hundreds of thousands of consumers.

The National Credit Union Administration announced that it has issued a federal charter to ELCA Federal Credit Union, making it the third such new charter for 2015.

While some predict that fintech startups will soon overthrow banks, a boom in partnerships between the two industries is far more likely. Startups will benefit from access to new markets and infrastructure, while banks will stay on the cutting edge of innovation.

U.S. bankruptcy filings totaled 422,782 during the first six months of the year, a 12% drop from the 479,573 filings reported during the same period last year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute, using data from by Epiq Systems Inc.