Banking

United Financial Bancorp in West Springfield, Mass., is closing a pair of Connecticut branches just months after buying them.

Bankers must concentrate on achieving greater efficiencies, stop focusing on short-term goals and strike the right balance between unacceptably poor compliance practices and unattainable perfection.

Merchant-funded rewards provider fisoc hopes the communal element of Facebook mixed with special card offers can drive repeat payments volume for small merchants focused on their local communities.

The banking industry's pace of expansion, which had shown signs of accelerating in late 2012, appears to have lost momentum.

Darrell Green, an initial investor in the bank, enjoyed a Hall of Fame career with the National Football League's Washington Redskins.

Flushing Financial in Lake Success, N.Y. is now a bank. The $4.5 billion-asset company said Thursday that it had also merged Flushing Savings Bank and Flushing Commercial Bank to create a commercial bank chartered in New York.

The 11 state attorneys general who have joined a lawsuit against the Dodd-Frank Act are arguing for their case to be heard despite a request by the government to dismiss the suit.

ACH Alert announced Thursday that Trustmark National Bank of Jackson, Miss. has chosen it for its automated clearing house network fraud prevention services.

Lenders are lowering rates and stretching out loan terms to win business, and that combination could spell trouble when interest rates rise.

Bank of American Fork in Utah held a retirement party Wednesday for an executive who has spent 45 years with the bank.

A big gain in servicing fees propelled Ocwen Financial (OCN) in the fourth quarter. Earnings at the Atlanta mortgage servicer rose to $65.1 million, compared with $9.7 million a year earlier.

The deal-hungry Independent Bank Group in Mckinney, Texas, is planning to raise up to $92 million through an initial public offering.

Some of the nation's biggest banks are touting their small business bona fides. Citigroup (NYSE:C) said Thursday the company's lending to small business borrowers rose 21% in 2012 from a year earlier, to $9.6 billion.

The head of Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) said Thursday that he is not interested in buying Royal Bank of Scotland's U.S. operations.

Some think the Minnesota bank would be hard to sell, but if William Cooper got a deal done, he could make nearly $16 million.

The Senate Banking Committee held another hearing on FHA's capital shortfall Thursday, debating whether to focus on stabilizing the agency's finances or pushing for more substantive changes.

Emigrant Bank in New York has received regulatory approval to sell branches to Apple Bank for Savings.

"One of the greatest threats facing not just banks but many businesses … is hacking and the possible theft of proprietary data and personal information about customers," Fed Gov. Raskin warned.

New Temenos CEO David Arnott is refreshingly honest about the company's travails and plans for the U.S. market.

Making home loans that aren't "qualified mortgages" will soon carry legal risk. Will making only QM loans expose lenders to fair-lending claims under the disparate impact doctrine? Washington must clarify.