Online banking

Startups are increasingly expanding into new areas with their bank partners in an effort to broaden their customer base and bring products to market faster.

Gateway Mortgage Group says its launch of a digital-only bank is scheduled for this summer.

The bank says it has restored access, but it hasn’t explained how a fire-suppression system at one facility could cause a nationwide outage across all of its channels, or how its system as a whole could have been left so vulnerable to the incident.

Customers reported being unable to access online banking, mobile banking or their debit cards.

Timothy Mayopoulos is back in the mortgage industry, becoming the new president of the digital mortgage technology developer Blend, months after leaving his post as Fannie Mae’s CEO.

Minorities are still charged more for mortgages when all other applicable credit factors are equal — both in person and online, according to a new study by the University of California, Berkeley.

Online personal lending pioneer Prosper is developing a home equity line of credit product that it will offer in partnership with banks. The embrace of traditional depositories marks a departure from fintech lenders that typically seek to disrupt and displace legacy institutions.

Casey Crawford, CEO of Movement Mortgage, bought First State Bank in Virginia last year. He has since injected more capital into the bank in an effort to reinvent it.

The digital-only Ally Bank has taken several steps to deepen customer relationships through electronic channels, including use of personalized emails and websites that have yielded strong click-through and loyalty rates.

With issuance of marketplace securitizations now exploding — rising 300% cumulatively in the past two years — the idea of online lending as a niche is quickly deteriorating.