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Technology? Bankers can keep up. New regulations? We've got people to handle that. But how to account for the flight of customers, prospective employees and economic opportunities from rural areas is perhaps the biggest challenge facing community lenders and policymakers, warns a longtime Oklahoma banker.

Brookline Bancorp in Boston said James McCarthy will succeed Russell Cole next month as president and CEO of First Ipswich Bank.

First NBC Bank Holding of New Orleans disclosed that it will miss a self-imposed deadline for filing reports for the first and second quarters.

When the movie "Equity" arrived in theaters — with women in the leading roles as Wall Street executives — Barbara Byrne had her name in the credits. The project is just one of the distinctive ways that Byrne, Barclays' vice chairman of investment banking, has been promoting gender diversity. She is motivated to make a difference and tries to choose projects that will have a big impact.

Meet JPMorgan Chase's new general counsel. Stacey Friedman, a tough financial litigator who also fights for social justice, is the only woman to serve as the general counsel of a systemically important U.S. bank. From crisis-era legal strategy to a recent failed grade on a living will, she embraces every challenge. But one of her proudest accomplishments is unrelated to banking: a pro bono case she helped win to stop a ban on same-sex couples adopting children.

Some bankers are proud of making it through the financial crisis. Imagine doing that while also contending with a huge personal crisis. Karen Glenn, the chief executive of a Kentucky community bank, is a single mom of twin boys. She had just made it through a major health issue with one of her sons, when the other was diagnosed with cancer.

Rosilyn Houston couldn't have known it at the time, but the year she spent caring for her toddler son while he underwent treatment for leukemia would have a profound impact on the trajectory of her career.

When Laura Sikora interviewed at BMO Financial 20 years ago, she was struck by the fact that several people asked her what she wanted to do next. She got the message that her aspirations were important to the company, and now she has spearheaded a new micromentoring program to give others help with realizing their career goals. Employees who have specific skills they want to improve can get matched up with a colleague for some customized coaching sessions.

Centric Financial is one of the few publicly traded banking companies with women in the chief executive and chief financial officer roles. Centric is also distinctive for its enviable growth and performance. Those two facts are not purely coincidental, according to President and CEO Patricia Husic.

Women at JPMorgan Chase don't just settle for the formal check-the-box networking groups. Their grassroots efforts have launched multiple programs to raise the profile of women at the company and help them advance, including a new "30-5-1" campaign inspired by Marianne Lake. Other examples include the globe-trotting Women on the Move initiative and the ReEntry program to help ex-bankers return to the workforce after extended time off.

There's a lot to be done now that KeyCorp has closed on its deal for First Niagara, and it's telling who has been put in charge of the many different facets of the integration. While some might have just a few token women on their leadership team, Key can boast about the diversity of its bench strength.

For several years, Zions Bank has monitored salaries to ensure women aren't being paid less than men for comparable work. Last year, the monitoring went from a semiannual review to a constant lookout.

Candi Wolff of Citigroup and Anita Eoloff of Wells Fargo are two of the most powerful banking lobbyists in the nation’s capital, but they don’t think the transformation of their once male-dominated field is done, nor do they think everything about the past should be abandoned.

The subprime auto lender continues to struggle to get its arms around accounting issues that date to 2013.

Lisa McDougald, the deputy general counsel at the $222 billion-asset BB&T in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Leon Holschbach, chief executive at Midland States Bancorp, a $3 billion-asset company in Effingham, Ill., were appointed to the board this summer.

A compliance-at-all-costs mentality, which is the overarching attitude in many banks, results in overspending and overallocating valuable resources to meet both real and perceived compliance standards.

Wellesley Bancorp in Massachusetts has appointed New England banking veteran Kathryn Hinderhofer to its board.

Brookline Bancorp in Boston has promoted its head of commercial real estate lending to leader of its entire banking unit.

One CU celebrates more than seven decades of service, while others offer scholarships, financial literacy training, random acts of kindness and more.

Paper-based marketing — not digital communication — remains a more promising way to reach customers 50 and older, who also tend to be a bank's wealthiest client segment.