Financial institutions

Prestige Financial Services, which focuses on car buyers who are in the bankruptcy process, is trying to keep pace in a fast-growing market.

The San Francisco company hopes to lower its costs by driving out human intervention as much as possible. To get there, it has made the counterintuitive decision to locate its operations staff in one of the country’s most expensive cities.

Marketplace lenders seek to disrupt traditional financial services with online platforms that connect borrowers to investors. But in real estate, this burgeoning sector has taken an approach that seeks to coexist with, rather than supplant, the traditional mortgage market.

The U.S. auto lending industry continues its multiyear boom. What follows is a look at numerous metrics that reflect the red-hot state of the market.

IMGCAP(1)]

Nearly seven years after the financial crisis, the uncomfortable truth for the banking industry is that populist anger remains alive and well.

The lack of liquidity in the bond markets has drawn significant attention from policymakers, but agreeing on what is causing it, and whether new regulations required by Dodd-Frank are to blame, may be impossible.

Some large U.S. banks are likely to be impacted by recent volatility in emerging markets like Brazil and China. But their opaque risk metrics make it difficult for investors to judge banks' level of exposure.

The failure to prosecute bankers as a result of the financial crisis has sparked an ongoing debate about whether enforcement officials lacked the will to move forward with any cases — or didn't have enough proof that any crimes had been committed.

Nothing touches off an argument more than questions about whether the CFPB will allow any marketing services agreements to continue. Some mortgage lenders say no and are winding down their agreements, others insist regulators can be satisfied, and still others are just plain confused.

Tech investors love fast-growing marketplace lenders like Social Finance, but Wall Street has taken a dimmer view of them. A huge equity fundraising round should allow SoFi to keep fueling rapid growth while remaining privately owned.

For those who lament the U.S. government's failure to put individuals on trial for their role in the 2008 mortgage crisis, Iceland's prosecution of bankers represents a platonic ideal of financial supervision. But the comparison between the Icelandic and U.S. cases is not as simple as it may appear.

Banks have ramped up foreclosure activity in the past five months, with default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions at their highest levels in two years. It's a positive sign that banks are finally clearing out all the distressed loans still lingering from the housing crisis. Meanwhile, banks remain cautious about new lending, partly because of regulatory actions.

The Chicago-based online consumer lender, which focuses on borrowers with less than pristine credit histories, is getting a boost from JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and Jefferies.

As the 2008 financial crisis fades into memory, it has become increasingly unlikely that any bankers or traders involved will see jail time. But while no individuals were ever charged with a crime, the feeling that the financial industry got away scot-free will affect the 2016 presidential race and beyond.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council has a mandate to designate nonbank financial companies as systemically important based on criteria established by Congress. Its designation decisions should not be predetermined by the actions of global regulators.

A look at how Dodd-Frank has affected the banking industry, and what other forces are at play.

In 1979, mortgage bankers worried that they could be undercut by "sleeping giants" like Merrill Lynch, Sears Roebuck and what was then called Master Charge.

C2FO, the operator of an online marketplace for small-business financing, announced a $40 million equity funding round led by a Singapore investment firm.