With the acquisition, the Lake City, Florida-based community bank will nab a consumer-direct platform and expand its footprint in the Midwest.

Rising vacancy levels, soaring interest rates and weaknesses exposed by recent bank failures have analysts and investors worried about banks' outsized exposure to high-rise office, apartment and retail properties.

Lenders had started tightening as early as the fourth quarter in anticipation of a possible recession. Now, the banking crisis is driving community and regional banks in particular to hit the brakes harder, stoking renewed recessions fears.

The banks invested in bonds at a time when rates were low, and their value has since dropped substantially. While there appears to be very little risk that the banks will ever have to realize the losses, an American Banker data analysis raises questions about whether regulators should toughen their monitoring of interest rate risk.

The company agreed to pay $27.2 million in restitution to shareholders and revised its 2022 earnings to show a steep loss. The plea agreement with the Department of Justice was tied to Sterling's now defunct low-documentation mortgage program.

Brady Torgerson, former president of First Security Bank-West, was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud at two banks.

The threshold for the obligation has been lowered to 25 closed-end mortgage loans originated in each of the two preceding calendar years, according to a bulletin published on the OCC's website.

The Long Island company is closing 69% of the retail home lending offices previously operated by Flagstar Bancorp. New York Community recently acquired Flagstar for $2.6 billion.

Despite the reduction from last year, "there are some signs that that production is coming back" in mortgage, the bank's CEO said.

The Texas bank will let customers go through the entire process on their phones, at the same time that it emphasizes human service that is not impacted by commissions.

A month after the National Community Reinvestment Coalition blasted KeyBank's mortgage lending record to Black borrowers, the group said it will send letters to the Federal Reserve and OCC about its findings.

Significantly fewer households expected to be in worse shape in the coming year than was the case last summer, according to a December survey. The results are a positive sign for banks at the start of earnings season.

Student borrowers in the U.S. are struggling to keep up with other kinds of debt even while college payments are frozen, and a surge in delinquencies is likely if the government's debt-relief plan fails, according to a new study.

Among U.S. financial regulators, Chopra is the one who bankers fear the most. His agency is expected to battle with the financial industry in 2023 on topics ranging from discrimination to fees and the bureau's funding mechanism.

Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the bank is "not making rapid progress" and hinted at the possibility of additional restrictions. But analysts saw positives for Wells in the $3.7 billion consent order.

Recent clashes over how much investors should get paid when borrowers switch to a new benchmark are a small part of a much larger struggle by global regulators to shift markets away from the scandal-tainted London interbank offered rate.

Though housing is experiencing severe rate-related stress, mortgage banking remains central to the Denver-based bank's business model. The Texas market has held up better than much of the rest of the country, company executives say.

In a sprawling consent order, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau order cited mismanagement that extended from auto loans to mortgages and deposit accounts. Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf called the agreement a critical milestone to "put these issues behind us."

Nonbanks would have to inform the CFPB of any state or local court decisions against them involving consumer financial products, under a new proposed rule. That information would be pooled with data about federal violations and be made available to the public.

Benefits under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act were applied to fewer than 10% of auto loans for active-duty reserve members, the agency found. It urged financial institutions to ease the process for accessing the law's interest rate protections.