Consumer lending

Year-end adjustments to mortgage industry employment statistics revealed a larger-than-expected increase in hiring by nondepository lenders and brokers during 2016.

Only a few days remain for loan officers to complete the survey to be considered for the 2017 Top Producers rankings. The deadline is 6 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 3.

Nonprime mortgage securitization has roughly doubled each of the last two years, and it shows no signs of stopping, according to Fitch Ratings.

Increases in commercial real estate, C&I and municipal and state loans boosted fourth-quarter profit at the $13 billion-asset Trustmark.

The company wants a big deal to help push it over $50 billion of assets, at which point it will be considered systematically important.

A bond-market startup is a step closer to reviving crisis-era derivatives that let investors bet on U.S. homeowner defaults.

Appraisal management companies must self-regulate their prices unless they want the government to do it for them.

The Virginia bank has agreed to buy Tidewater Mortgage's majority stake in Old Point Mortgage.

The Connecticut bank said a spike in business lending and residential mortgages gave its fourth-quarter earnings a boost.

Fourth-quarter profits at Wintrust Financial in Rosemont, Ill., climbed 65% to $54.6 million from a year earlier, helped largely by acquisitions and increases in mortgage banking and other fee income.

Three midsize banks projected increases in loans this year in the latest round of earnings discussions, but their levels of optimism varied, and their commercial lending strategies in some cases conflicted.

The Michigan company expects a recently announced mortgage initiative to produce solid growth in 2017.

Moody's Corp. agreed to pay almost $864 million to resolve a multiyear U.S. investigation into credit ratings on subprime mortgage securities, helping to clear the way for the firm to move beyond its crisis-era litigation.

The Columbus, Ga., bank reported higher fourth-quarter profit on growth in business loans and mortgage banking.

JPMorgan Chase's net mortgage banking revenue for the fourth quarter was $1.69 billion, an increase of just 1% over the same period in 2015.

Bank of America Corp.'s fourth-quarter mortgage revenue almost doubled to $519 million from a year earlier.

Wells Fargo, which lost its status as the world's most valuable lender after a scandal in its retail bank, said profit dropped 5.4% as revenue from its mortgage business declined.

Deutsche Bank is considering an unusual approach to providing relief to subprime mortgage borrowers as part of a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. government: lending money to private equity firms and hedge funds.

National banks have experienced a dramatic drop in loan modification activity over the past year, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Kenneth Mahon, the new CEO of Dime Community Bank, wants to reduce the 152-year-old institution's multifamily exposure by diversifying into other asset classes. But finding new business amid already fierce competition could be an immense challenge for Dime — and other community banks — in 2017.