Community Bank System in Syracuse, N.Y., has agreed to buy Oneida Financial in Oneida, N.Y.

Community bank earnings surged 28% to $4.8 billion during the fourth quarter, compared to a 7.3% decline for the industry as a whole, according to a report released Tuesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Docking Bancshares in Arkansas City, Kan., has agreed to buy RelianzBank in Wichita, Kan.

American Banker’s Index of Banking Activity hit a three-year low in January as falling oil prices and harsh winter weather tamped down borrowing.

Huntington had admired the finance firm for decades, but it was the Ohio company's Midwestern ties that helped it snag the unit from other suitors.

A more efficient, customer-friendly process for small-dollar commercial loan requests is a matter of competitive necessity for most community banks.

BofI Holding in San Diego is planning a new $50 million offering after raising the same amount earlier this year.

Huntington Bancshares in Columbus, Ohio, has agreed to buy Macquarie Equipment Finance in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Banks are transforming branches, rolling out new products and experimenting with alternative data, in an effort to bring more people into the financial mainstream. Such initiatives might have been a footnote in the past, but they have grown into a serious business strategy lately.

A sudden funding crisis forced John Bryant to shake up Operation Hope and develop a new model that relies heavily on banks to promote financial literacy. If it succeeds, Bryant says, it will drive more customers to banks and credit unions — and maybe even put payday lenders out of business.

Financial illiteracy is costing cities billions in revenue. Would more money-management programs in schools — funded by the sale of government bonds — change that?

The upstarts are shaking up the world of small-business financing, but with fraud concerns mounting, some say it's only a matter of time before they come under the scrutiny of state and federal regulators.

Creating checking accounts, mortgages and consumer loans with features that suit folks with lower incomes is paying off in unexpected ways for some banks.

Daunted by the challenge of how your bank can help underserved members of the community? Here are some simple tips and bits of wisdom from bankers, nonprofit leaders and local government officials.

Sunwest Bank in Irvine, Calif., has been sending employees to Africa and South America since 2011 to do philanthropic work. While such projects could help recruit Millennials, industry experts also see challenges selling foreign missions to employees and customers.

Sheila Bair, the former chairman of the FDIC, has the answer for significantly reducing the regulatory burden on small banks: give regulators the power to exempt institutions with less than $10 billion of assets from any new or existing regulation.

There's nothing wrong with big banks gaining market share because they offer the products and services that customers want. But there's a problem when big banks can beat off their smaller rivals with a club fashioned by legislators and regulators.

One way to help the global economy prosper is to think of the poor and the middle class as untapped assets for entrepreneurship and job creation. That was the premise underlying a panel discussion at a recent conference on financial inclusion.The panel included, from left, Clare Woodcraft-Scott, the chief executive of the Emirates Foundation; Monica Mehta, managing principal of Seventh Capital in Houston, a family office that invests in lower-market consumer businesses, and author of "The Entrepreneurial Instinct: How Everyone Has the Innate Ability to Start a Successful Small Business," and Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif. Their discussion took place in Atlanta at the 2015 Hope Global Forum, presented by Operation Hope.

Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif., says introducing young people to what's possible, so that they don't feel limited by their current circumstances, is a way of continuing the mission that Martin Luther King Jr. started. Brown was a featured speaker at the recent Hope Global Forum, which focused on the theme of financial inclusion. She was there to discuss several initiatives underway in Compton, including one with the University of Southern California to offer industry-specific employment training.

Banks need outside help to deliver credit to the underserved, says Tim Wennes, the West Coast president of MUFG Union Bank, who shares advice on what kind of partners to seek and how to vet them.