Banking

Risk management and compliance vendors were the fastest-growing companies in the FinTech Forward top 100, reflecting the industry's new priorities.

This year, bankers seemed to remember in a big way that first-class technology is critical to their competitiveness — and relevance.

To see an interactive version of Top 100 Companies in FinTech, click here.

To see an interactive version of this table, click here.

FinTech Forward, a collaboration of American Banker and BAI, brings together the research, media, and event capabilities of banking’s top two professional information and education organizations.

The leaders of the most successful tech companies serving the financial services industry share hints about their business and product strategies for the coming year and observations about customers' tech preferences.

To identify the fintech startups deserving of special recognition this year, a team of American Banker editors, BAI staff and consultant Jeanne Capachin debated the merits of self-nominees and companies we know. These are the ten that matter for 2015.

BOK Financial in Tulsa, Okla., will close or relocate all of its branches inside grocery stores in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas in a move it says will reduce overhead by $7 million to $8 million a year.

Kelly King of BB&T is an M&A trailblazer, but he isn't doing so intentionally. In announcing plans to buy Susquehanna Bancshares, King said he believes more bankers are becoming more confident maneuvering the choppy regulatory environment.

Richard Davis, asked during a conference about BB&T's $2.5 billion purchase of Susquehanna Bancshares, made it clear that his company has no interest in large, out-of-market acquisitions.

The Rural Housing Service has said it will stop accepting new mortgage applications for one week in an effort to clear through its huge backlog.

A federal court has ordered two debt sellers that posted the sensitive personal information of more than 70,000 consumers online to notify the consumers and explain how they can protect themselves against identity theft and other fraud as a result of the disclosures.

The $5.8 billion-asset company said in a press release Wednesday that Shelley Seifert would fill the newly created role.

The company cited uncertainties with industrywide litigation and the regulatory environment in the move. In August, a New York regulator questioned its purchase of the unit from an affiliated company.

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered two debt sellers—St. Petersburg Florida's Bayview Solutions, LLC and Riverside, California's Cornerstone and Company, LLC — to notify customers about alleged disclosures of their personal information.

While banks have spent tens of billions of dollars to settle investigations related to the sale of faulty mortgages, probes into everything from foreign-exchange trading to subprime automobile lending are forcing many of them to continue adding to their legal reserves.

Carver Bancorp in New York has named a new chief lending officer and president of its community development unit.

A growing number of Americans frequent payday lenders, check cashers and other firms outside the financial mainstream, and with good reason: they cannot get reliable and affordable service from the country's biggest banks.

Bank of America, which paid more in legal settlements tied to the U.S. housing collapse than any other company, will avoid easing mortgage standards even as regulators seek to expand lending, Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan said.

A legal association's ethics committee on Wednesday issued an opinion finding that a growing practice by local prosecutors of allowing debt collection agencies to send demand letters - that suggest they came from the prosecutor - violates rules of professional conduct.