Credit

The team that founded marketplace lender Avant Inc. raised about $15 million to start a firm that will use blockchain technology and digital tokens to motivate companies to share data about customer identities and credit worthiness.

Bank of America is offloading some margin loans after losing $292 million on soured credit to the former chairman of Steinhoff International Holdings, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Use of alternative data in traditional credit scoring would help consumers access the banking system and lower their cost of credit.

A former senior executive at Equifax Inc. was criminally charged for allegedly selling almost $1 million worth of shares before the company’s announcement last year that it had suffered a massive data breach.

A late addition to regulatory relief legislation would direct the Federal Housing Finance Agency to review credit-scoring alternatives, but some say the provision is redundant.

TransUnion’s analysis of credit card applications and transactions finds fraudsters continue to steal more, but the rate of increase is slowing.

The company received bad news about the commercial loan after it reported a narrow profit in mid-February.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is among several agencies that "continue to investigate events related to" last year's Equifax brief, the credit reporting firm said in a securities filing.

The tax reform law passed late last year, which significantly cut the corporate tax rate, has been widely popular among banks, but a one-time hit to the value of their deferred tax assets was felt far and wide.

Artificial intelligence is expected to bring financial services to millions, yet it could also make unethical decisions that unfairly deny credit and widen the divide between haves and have-nots, says Nicolas Economou of the nonprofit Future Society.