Banking

Three Ohio credit unions have completed a rare three-institution merger to form Pathways Financial Credit Union.

Flickers of life in the housing market are prompting homebuilders to seek revolving lines of credit from banks for the first time in several years. They are getting them, and money from the debt and equity markets, too.

Broadway Financial (BYFC) in Los Angeles has increased its 2011 loss by 45%, to $15.4 million, after restating its financial results.

The holidays came six months early for some credit unions this year, in the form of an NCUA ruling that allows remote teller technology to qualify as service facilities.

Congress has punched traditional bankers in the nose, and if we do nothing in the next 50 days, they will continue this abuse with impunity.

Issuers are finding more and more sophisticated ways to entice consumers to swipe their cards over those of their rival banks.

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. – Navy FCU will open a new branch here this morning, its 32nd in California, which will serve the 8,700 Department of Defense, military, civilian members, and their families in Orange County.

The Missouri Division of Finance closed the $282.3 million-asset Truman Bank in St. Louis on Friday. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. entered into an agreement with Simmons First National Bank in Pine Bluff, Ark., to buy the bank's assets and assume its $245.7 million in deposits.

First Bancshares (FBSI) in Mountain Grove, Mo., said that fewer troubled loans helped it turn a profit in the fiscal fourth quarter that ended June 30.

The FDIC is trying to help bankers prep for exams and more clearly understand the results as part of a broader effort at improving relations, Martin Gruenberg, the agency's acting Chairman, said.

Bank Marketing Strategy blogger Jim Marous, former senior director of marketing services at Harland Clarke, has been recruited to direct marketing agency New Control.

Level One Bancorp in Farmington Hills, Mich., is applying its experience working on failed banks to buy and integrate one that is merely struggling. Patrick Fehring, the company's CEO, says that experience integrating failed banks has prepared Level One to buy the struggling Oxford Bank.

Chief Technology Officer Tim Lenoff discusses how the bank melds technology and customer conversations to head off fraud.

For banks to tap into the full potential of advanced analytics, they should address some difficult challenges, including vast quantities of poorly organized data, inadequately skilled staff and risk management operations still stuck in silos.

The Basel III capital proposals would severely restrict already weak lending at community banks and has to be changed, panelists said at American Banker's Regulatory Symposium. But international politics and legal requirements will make them hard to change, they acknowledged.

Google says use of its mobile wallet app has more than doubled since it modified Google Wallet to more easily allow consumers to link their credit and debit cards.

Apple has — yet again — left payments out when it designed its newest iPhone, despite numerous indications that it explored using Near Field Communication technology to create a mobile wallet. Apple had many good reasons to choose the course it did.

Mary Miller, the U.S. Treasury under secretary for domestic finance, praised the Dodd-Frank Act in a speech at American Banker's Regulatory Symposium Friday.

Regulators should re-examine how they classify deposits, or more banks could be classified as troubled. That was the view of a panel on the Transaction Account Guarantee program at American Banker's Regulatory Symposium.

By prodding Freddie Mac to pursue more loan putbacks, the FHFA's inspector general has proven itself willing and able to force confrontation between the GSEs and their customers.