Banking

Park Sterling (PSTB) in Charlotte, N.C., has added to its recently established team in Virginia.

A federal judge ordered the arrest and incarceration of Paul Navestad, known legally as Paul Richard Jones, for violating an April 2012 court order requiring him to pay more than $20 million for his role in a phony government grant scheme.

JPMorgan Chase recovered only $593 million in charged-off credit card debts in 2013 - a slump of 57% from three years earlier. The drop reflects the improving economy and the regulatory pressures facing JPMorgan and other big banks over their collection practices.

Jamie Dimon, who survived a shareholder proposal in 2013 to split his chairman and chief executive officer roles atop JPMorgan Chase (JPM), won't face the same threat this year.

Silicon Valley Bank and MasterCard Inc. launched the Commerce.Innovated. accelerator to find and nurture innovators in payments technology.

Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest U.S. bank, gave Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat a 25 percent pay raise to about $14.4 million for 2013, his first full year running the firm.

BBVA agreed on Thursday to buy disrupter Simple for $117 million in a bid to improve the Spanish bank's digital properties.

Enterprise Financial Services (EFSC) in Clayton, Mo., has promoted an executive to lead its commercial banking efforts.

Guernsey Bancorp in Westerville, Ohio, has terminated an agreement to buy Ohio State Bank in Marion.

Umpqua Holdings and Sterling Financial are paying Banner $7 million to take the branches. Though negative bids are uncommon in healthy bank deals, it seems like a small price to get regulators to bless a $2 billion merger.

An industry leader discusses advances in collections methodologies - including the creation of effective collections infrastructure, innovations in the field and the major factors driving change in collections strategies.

Phone fraud prevention company Pindrop Security has launched an authentication system that allows call centers and other institutions to confirm the identity, location and type of device used by callers.

Once written off as an endangered species, nonbank home lenders are making a comeback in the third-party origination businesses abandoned by banks since the financial crisis.

Experian Automotive announced Thursday that consumers continued to make their loan payments on time in Q4 2013. Automotive loan 30-day delinquencies were down 3.5 percent (going from 2.72 percent in Q4 2012 to 2.63 percent in Q4 2013), and 60-day delinquencies remained flat at 0.74 percent.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's crackdown on mortgage servicers' operations will increase the pressure on lenders to improve their processes, paperwork and communications with borrowers. American Banker journalists discuss how both banks and nonbank servicers can get ahead of the new regulatory scrutiny.

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria has agreed to pay $117 million for online banking startup Simple.

Several companies and individuals have agreed to settlements with the Federal Trade Commission that ban them from selling business or work-at-home opportunities and require them to surrender assets to the FTC.

Regulation, succession planning and lending limits are huge issues, particularly for banks with $100 million or less in assets. As a result, more of those banks are taking a hard look at selling themselves.

A former executive of Anchor Bancorp Wisconsin (ABCW) in Madison has been charged with six counts of wire fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office in Madison said Wednesday.

I myself am a HMDA wonk, but one with a rather love-hate relationship to the numbers. I love what they reveal, but hate the headaches that come from wrestling with data.