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A US trade publication covering banking, bank regulation and financial technology for industry executives, with a regular opinion section.
The Supreme Court heard Anderson v. Intel on Oct. 6 and is yet to rule on how closely a benchmark fund must match a 401(k) option before a suit proceeds. A looser standard could bring plan sponsors and advisors costlier ERISA suits, American Banker reported.
Reality
Colony Bank cut its SBA loan process from 92 steps to 32 with generative AI software, American Banker reported. Division president Darren Davis now quotes about seven business days for responsive customers, against the 15 his own estimate implied under the SBA's new rules.
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Proposed Basel III changes would replace the mortgage servicing asset deduction with a flat 250% risk weight, American Banker reports. Servicing-heavy nonbank lenders could find a bank charter more attractive, but approval takes years and is not guaranteed.
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California's Proposition 3 would make the 10.3% to 12.3% top income tax rates permanent, affecting nearly 376,000 taxpayers, American Banker reported. The rates now lapse in 2031, so a passing vote changes what clients owe in every later year.
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Financial Planning's survey of 213 advisors puts confidence at minus-2 in October, down from plus-4 in July. Economic and policy outlooks fell while the score for advisors' own practices rose 9 points to plus-35.
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Antwerp Exchange Bank Co. of Ohio is the 10th financial institution represented by one lawyer to sue Fiserv over multifactor authentication. Fiserv's filings say each client decides whether to use stronger login protections, and a court that agreed would leave that risk with the institution.
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Comptroller Jonathan Gould presented the OCC's debanking report in Lexington beside Senate candidate Andy Barr, weeks before election day. Gould suggested rules may follow. No penalty has been reported.
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Crypto interests are backing senior House Financial Services Republicans in suddenly competitive November races, American Banker reported. The spending total is unknown. If Democrats win the House, new committee leaders take over however these races end.
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OpenArc and SageSpring train new advisors for three and two years, American Banker reported, against a projected 100,000-advisor gap by 2034. The open question for firms copying them is whether apprenticeship keeps a book of business intact when a senior planner retires.
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Boston Fed President Susan Collins said the Fed will have to raise rates "a bit further" after last month's 25-basis-point hike. Her own central case still has inflation easing to 2%, so how far depends on whether fuel and AI-construction costs spread.
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Some 40% of 401(k) pre-retirees want a personalized retirement plan and 39% want guaranteed monthly payments, a report found. The top ask is withdrawal at any time, at 46%, so the advisor opening is narrower than those two figures suggest.
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Trump asked Congress again for the CLARITY Act. A mid-September cloture vote, a crowded Senate calendar and an unresolved ethics fight say the clarity is not arriving this year.
Perspective Coverage
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Navy Federal Credit Union is using AI bots that pose as scam victims to block payments to fraud accounts before any of its 14 million members send money. Payments that settle in seconds leave no day-long window to catch a scam, so the credit union is moving its screening ahead of the transfer for members whose deployments make sudden large payments less unusual.
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Swift has 50 institutions live on its new retail payment scheme and expects about 100 by year end, Americas chief Leigh Amaro told American Banker. The figure counts sign-ups, and for banks still deciding, the better guide is how many of their own counterparties are already on the scheme.
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Byline Bancorp agreed to pay about $87.9 million for Illinois State Bancorp, a deal that lifts the $9.9 billion Chicago lender over $10 billion in assets. Byline is one of few active acquirers in a city investors call overbanked, so the deal tests whether Chicago consolidation rests on one buyer.
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FDIC's draft RAMP certificate would swap repeated fintech diligence for one reusable assessment covering two of the three risk layers in a partnership. An American Banker opinion piece argues the third layer, how the two firms actually fit together, still has to be checked bank by bank.
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House Democrats led by Maxine Waters asked the FDIC and OCC for at least 120 days to review a 400-plus-page Community Reinvestment Act rewrite. For banks, how long the rule lasts matters more, since the OCC's last solo rewrite was rescinded by the next administration.
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Former Philadelphia Fed president wants examiners to use a 1962 law on AI vendors after the April 17 SR 11-7 rewrite excluded generative AI. The plan skips Congress but still asks for a new supervisory letter within 12 months, aimed at the few suppliers whose models many banks share.
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Senate Democrats reintroduced a private equity bill that would bar payouts from bought-out companies for four years and cap them at 10% of debt after that. Filed three times before, it is unlikely to pass this Congress and sets out what a Democratic majority could take up after the midterms.
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ASB Bank, Bank of America, Capital One, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ING Group and NatWest set out transparency, safety, privacy, choice and interoperability in a document KeyBanc called voluntary and non-binding.
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Invest · September 3, 2026 · One report1 publisher