ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Fueled by higher bank fees and the Bank Transfer Day movement, credit unions scored some of their biggest membership gains ever in the second half of 2011, NCUA reported this morning.

BOK Financial Corp. in Tulsa is eyeing acquisitions of banks and nonbanks as it looks to both increase market share in areas where it operates and generate more revenues from fees.

Fiserv is merging its two person-to-person payment offerings, Popmoney and ZashPay, and will market the combined offering as Popmoney.

Heritage Commerce Bancorp Inc. in San Jose has received approval from its regulators and the Treasury Department to repay the $40 million it received from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Georgia Bank & Trust has found that an automated approach to software patches brings compliance benefits.

Mobile banking, virtualization and imaging technology dominated this year's Top 10 Community Bank IT Initiatives. Thad Hutcheson at T Bank stood out from the pack for smart in-house/outsource decisions.

Florida Capital Bank in Jacksonville has raised $25 million in the last 15 months as it works to meet regulatory capital ratios and overcome a slew of problem loans.

To the surprise of no one closely watching a new bill seeking to give banks some cover from examiners, federal regulators confirmed that no, they would not be OK with Congress creating an alternative appeals route for banks that want to dispute their exam ratings.

The current regulatory approach to compliance has led bankers to stop offering certain consumer loan products or to increase what they charge. We all lose if the cost of compliance forces regulated lenders to send customers to the back-alley loan shark.

Getting Associated Banc-Corp back in shape required painful writedowns, fresh capital, lending discipline, cultural adjustments, new growth tactics, more transparency — and a leader to put it all together. Enter Phillip Flynn.

For all the anxiety over low interest rates, net interest margins are higher now than they were for much of the last decade. For banks with less than $10 billion of assets, NIMs have been climbing for two and a half years.

Broadway Financial's new CEO; Goldman's Blankfein stands up for gay marriage; CenterState's preemptive strikes; Peetz's Penn State gig; ICBA's Nashville meet.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Thursday will announce the claims process for thrift shareholders who last year won a breach-of-contract case stemming from the savings-and-loan crisis.

When a judge blocked BankAtlantic's complicated deal to sell the healthy portion of its thrift to BB&T, it was the third so-called good bank/bad bank deal in Florida to get hung up.

Regulators say risk-based capital is the ratio they most want to see strengthened, community bankers say. That's a problem because minimum requirements could rise and examiners are said to exercise broad discretion in enforcement.

Pacific Mercantile Bancorp in Costa Mesa, Calif., has restructured its planned stock sale to an institutional investor in a move that will save it almost $1 million and increase a key capital ratio.

BancVue of Austin, Texas is exiting the credit card business in order to devote more attention to its primary business of helping banks and credit unions attract more customers through high-yield checking and savings products.

Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc. has put some of its excess capital to work by repurchasing 5.4 million warrants in a move that would eliminate potential dilution.

First California Financial Group Inc. in Westlake Village, Calif., has agreed to buy a small California bank about a month after announcing that it had hired an investment bank to explore its options.

A judge's ruling against the sale of BankAtlantic to BB&T could also empower holders of trust preferred securities to play a bigger role in M&A.