Commercial lending

Banks need to advocate for the advancement of women-owned small businesses. Our economic diversity depends on it.

Block, the digital-payments firm run by Jack Dorsey, is expanding its small-business loans service to Canada, bringing it into more direct competition with the country's biggest banks.

The first-of-their-kind measures, urging banks to move more aggressively to curtail new fossil-fuel lending, garnered between 11% and 13% of the vote at Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. Those totals were less than climate activists had hoped to garner, but high enough to clear certain thresholds for resubmission next year.

Lenders don't oppose CFPB data collection for small-business loans but favor changes that would minimize unintended consequences for borrowers, a Consumer Bankers Association official writes.

Earnings and total loans fell in the first quarter at M&T, but the Buffalo, New York, bank offered a rosier forecast for the rest of 2022. The outlook anticipates a shot in the arm from the recent acquisition of People's United Financial.

Bankers trying to get their net-zero CO2 targets certified now face hard deadlines to reduce capital flows to fossil fuels.

The bank has pivoted its commercial real estate operation as the rise of work-from-home arrangements has impacted market values. The only type of office space it's financing is Class-A buildings in major cities.

U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo both reported robust business loan volumes during the first quarter, while other large lenders reported smaller gains. Inflation is fueling more spending on technology, and companies are catching up on capital expenditures that they deferred earlier in the pandemic, according to bank executives.

As inflation increases, more companies are shifting to remote and hybrid work to get their costs under control. Landlords could face rising vacancies and tumbling revenue, leaving them behind on loan payments.

Banks have supported initiatives aimed at closing the racial equality gap but the industry risks undermining this by fighting new rules to gather demographic data on small-business lending.