Financial planning

The total includes donations to community groups helping low-income people, support for the development of financial coaching programs and investment in the creation and testing of fintech tools that can help underserved people.

The Money Anxiety Index, a measure of consumer saving and spending habits, has started rising off a 50-year low. The economist who created it says that means another slump is nearing, and that banks should use the intel in pricing deposits and making other decisions.

Making donations for a variety of causes and teaching Boy Scouts about coins are just some of the ways credit unions are helping out in their communities.

Congress has returned from its two-week vacation with plans to debate a number of issues important to the credit union industry.

"If you gathered the U.S.-based senior counsels of the major Chinese banks operating in the United States," said Joseph Loffredo, assistant general manager and chief financial officer at the New York branch of China Merchants Bank, "you'd find one outlier, a lady about half the age of most of the others."

The U.S. subsidiary of the British banking giant has partnered with Everfi to offer an online self-guided financial education program, and with GreenPath Financial Wellness to deliver in-person seminars in numerous cities.

These programs are becoming a more common employee benefit but many lack some of the tools users need to be successful.

A handful of institutions are dipping a toe into a niche lending market that saw sales level off precipitously in the wake of the Great Recession.

Flourish, a fund backed by Pierre and Pam Omidyar, invests in startups that address social and financial inequities yet (key caveat) are still promising moneymakers, a top official of the fund explains.