Banking

A former employee at an Ohio branch of U.S. Bancorp (USB) pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he accepted $24,000 in kickbacks from debt collectors in exchange for giving them business.

Underwriting standards on auto loans will slip in 2014 as increased competition pushes lenders to take more risk, according to Moody's Investors Service.

The number of credit cards issued by banks and retailers hit five-year highs between January and August, according to the latest Equifax National Consumer Credit Trends Report.

HSBC USA (HSBC) in McLean, Va., has hired a longtime Citigroup (NYSE:C) executive, William Brown, to lead its U.S. branch network.

As credit cards defaults and delinquencies continue to wane, banks and retailers are growing increasingly more confident in extending credit to consumers.

Lenders’ choices today are stark: Make Qualified Mortgage loans and risk being sued under the disparate-impact doctrine; make non-QM loans and risk being sued under the ability-to-pay-doctrine; or sell their loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Heartland Financial (HTLF) in Dubuque, Iowa, has purchased a bank of River Valley Bancorp in Davenport, Iowa.

A botched ATM heist blew up — literally — on several Australian thieves when they soaked an automated teller machine in gasoline and tried to light it on fire, according to fintech blog Finextra.

Planwise is placing its financial modeling tools in places where people are making big financial decisions.

The technology company Omyen Corp. has released software that lets retirement advisors produce custom reports for their clients.

The U.S. lags far behind much of the world in transferring funds rapidly from the bank account of one party to another's. Times vary by bank, but recipients commonly wait days to receive payments. Here's a look at five countries where consumers and businesses enjoy close to real-time to transferred funds.

Wearable identity startup Bionym, one of BTN’s top 10 fintech companies to watch, released Monday its software development kit documentation and an online forum to get developers coding apps for its forthcoming wristband, which is called Nymi.

The rise of mobile banking is starting to impact branch staffing levels. At the same time, new jobs are being created in branches and on digital banking teams.

Ed Grebow abruptly left the New York bank after just two years. The union-controlled bank, backed by private equity and stabilized by its departed CEO, wants a leader who can generate a return on investment.

The final six of 10 defendants named in an alleged “Rachel from Cardholder Services” scam have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they misled consumers with bogus claims that they would lower their credit card interest rates.

Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) in Cincinnati has agreed to pay $25 million to Freddie Mac to resolve mortgage repurchase claims.

The auto loan delinquency rate (the ratio of borrowers 60 days or more delinquent on their auto loans) increased to 1.04% in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, up on both a quarterly and yearly basis (from 0.87% in the previous quarter and 1.00% in Q3 2012).

DCB Financial (DCBF) in Lewis Center, Ohio, has been freed from a Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland order.

Banc of California (BANC) in Irvine has filed documents that would allow it to offer up to $1 billion of securities.

Electronic payments provider ACI Worldwide inked a nine-year extension to service 24,000 ATMs across the U.K. for VocaLink, the country’s payment infrastructure provider.