Trump, Powell tussle over renovation costs in rare visit
President Trump and Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., visited the Federal Reserve Board headquarters Thursday afternoon to inspect ongoing renovations whose cost overruns have heightened scrutiny of Fed chair Jerome Powell.
Pinnacle, Synovus to merge; deal would create $116B bank
The two Southeast banks agreed to combine in a transaction valued at $8.6 billion. Synovus CEO Kevin Blair would be chief executive of the combined bank, but a slim majority of board members would come from Pinnacle.
In rare move, Flagstar seeks to dissolve its holding company
Flagstar Bank wants to merge its holding company into the bank, which would cut $15 million in annual expenses and eliminate regulatory oversight by the Federal Reserve, leaving the OCC as its primary regulator. The bank’s CEO, Joseph Otting, is a former comptroller of the currency.
How the Fed is managing payments’ ‘new GPS’
Fedwire has migrated to ISO 20022, a messaging standard designed to make it easier for digital real-time processing rails to work together. It’s a difficult lift for banks, but the agency promises it will be worth it.
Bread still watching inflation even as its credit improves
Bread Financial continues to keep its eye on the potential inflationary impacts of the Trump administration’s trade policies, despite the fact that its delinquencies and losses declined in the second quarter.
When customers go rogue, new AI models try to catch them
First-party fraud — customers claiming they never made a transaction when they know full well they did — is a growing problem for banks. An emerging host of vendors including Socure are offering machine learning models that detect this.
Consumer groups sue CFPB over small business data rule
A coalition of consumer groups sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting Director Rusell Vought for refusing to implement a statutorily-mandated small business data collection rule that is already tied up in litigation.
Don’t conflate stablecoins with tokenized bank deposits
Noelle Acheson unpacks the differences between stablecoins and tokenized deposits, and what they mean for both
Lending niches helped these banks to outperform their peers
Among banks with between $10 billion and $50 billion of assets, those that targeted narrow lending markets rose to the top.
De novos, deposit insurance reform find bipartisan momentum
The House Financial Services Committee passed a number of bipartisan banking bills with wide margins, suggesting a growing consensus on how to handle issues like deposit insurance, de novo bank formation and the Federal Reserve’s discount window.