Expense management

You read that right. Community bankers hope efforts by JPMorgan Chase, Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway will drive down health care costs — and maybe create products or services they can use.

Executives at U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America plan to use their tax savings to ramp up spending on new technology to stay competitive — but they sought to reassure investors that they would not abandon cost control.

Costs fell less than 1% to $54.7 billion in 2017, and its goal for 2018 is $53 billion. Analysts question whether revenue growth and tax relief will reduce the incentive to get leaner.

Wealth management assets, deposits and fee income swelled at the San Francisco bank, but interest and noninterest costs rose along with them.

Changing political and economic forces are raising new questions about deployment of tax savings and the cost of deposits, while old concerns about cost-cutting, credit quality and risk-taking persist or return.

The company said it will lay off more than a dozen employees in a move that reflects the current volume of mortgage loan originations.

The company has been working to address an informal agreement with regulators tied to Bank Secrecy Act compliance.

The Tennessee company also set high expectations for revenue opportunities while projecting it will deliver a 15% return on equity in 2019.

Blue Lion Capital believes a heavy focus on mortgages and acquisitions is hurting HomeStreet's financial performance.

Bridge Bancorp, which plans to rebrand is bank as BNB Bank, also plans to boost 2018 profit by $3.3 million by closing 14% of its branches.