Banking

The country's biggest bank has called a halt to its branch-expansion strategy of a year ago. Instead, JPMorgan Chase this week said it would start building smaller, cheaper branches with fewer tellers and more technology, as well as more offices for financial planners to meet with its wealthiest clients. American Banker editors discuss JPMorgan's new branch strategy and what it could signal for other banks.

JPMorgan Chase is the first bank to adopt a new disclosure box for its prepaid cards, developed by Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Federal Reserve Board has released Metropolitan Bank Holding in New York from a January 2011 enforcement action.

In the FDIC's fourth quarter earnings report, the agency said loan buybacks fell to their lowest level in 5 years.

In BMO Harris Bank's recent upgrade of its online banking site will offer improved personal financial management tools to mass affluent customers.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM:US) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS:US) were among 18 financial firms that agreed to stop participating in some surveys of analyst sentiment while New York investigates early access to the information.

Many people put off saving for retirement because old age seems far away. A new mobile application by Bank of America (BAC) aims to give procrastinators a sense of urgency by bringing them face-to-face with their wrinkled future selves.

The mortgage market has failed to shift from refinances to purchases as anticipated, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's latest weekly report on applications.

The most notable quotes from American Banker stories of the previous week. Readers are encouraged to add their own observations in the Comments fields at the bottom of each slide.

Jamie Dimon, who built JPMorgan Chase & Co. into the world's biggest investment bank, said threats to its dominance may come from Beijing, Silicon Valley and a San Francisco-based rival with a stage-coach logo.

Customers Bancorp in Wyomissing, Pa., (CUBI) plans to launch a virtual mobile banking platform in the third quarter of this year meant to make banking services more effortless for consumers.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest U.S. lender, is moving about 2,000 employees to offices in Brooklyn's MetroTech Center after a review of its real estate holdings, said a person with direct knowledge of the plan.

Southern Missouri Bancorp (SMBC) in Poplar Bluff, Mo., has agreed to buy Peoples Banking Company in Nixa, Mo.

The framework released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology should serve as an important tool for banks in meeting regulators’ heightened expectations for managing cyber risk.

First United (FUNC) in Oakland, Md., has received regulatory approval to catch up on interest payments for certain obligations.

An estimated 782 different collection agencies and creditors were sued in January under consumer statutes, including the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S. lender, disclosed new probes into its mortgage and foreign-exchange businesses and boosted an estimate of potential legal losses by 20 percent to $6.1 billion.

Indiana University notified the Indiana attorney general’s office Tuesday of the potential exposure of personal data for approximately 146,00 students and recent graduates.

Debt buyer Encore Capital Group Inc. announced Tuesday the acquisitions of two companies in separate transactions in the United Kingdom and Latin America.

CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski wants his company, Klarna AB, to be the Apple of European payments. That is to say, he is trying to earn a reputation for being "better than the rest in every small detail… of technology and innovation."