Banking Blog

Savers upset about the sale of ING Direct to Capital One may have reason to hope. The Federal Reserve Board was supposed to hold a vote on whether to approve the sale today, but the vote was delayed, suggesting there might be some dissent among the Fed governors on how to proceed.
For its part, Capital

If your bank closed or sold some of its branches last year, you weren’t alone. In fact, the total number of bank branches in the U.S. declined in 2011, after years during which the number of bank locations expanded.
Still, the drop in branch locations didn’t stop some banks from expanding their reach or adding more

JPMorgan Chase became the latest bank to settle a nationwide suit concerning the infamous “courtesy” overdraft fees. From Jonathan Stempel of Reuters:
JPMorgan Chase & Co has agreed to pay $110 million to settle consumer litigation accusing it of charging excessive overdraft fees.
The largest U.S. bank by assets joined Bank of America Corp and several smaller

Call it the battle of the bank brands.
A new report ranking the world’s most valuable brand names among banks has named HSBC as the holder of the top spot on a list of 500 bank brands.
The only British bank among the list’s top 10, HSBC leapfrogged Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which ranked first

If you’re guilty of overdrawing your checking account, one bank is introducing a choice for how you pay when they cover for your purchases.
TCF Bank announced yesterday that it will begin offering account holders the ability to choose between two types of overdraft protection: a per-item fee of $37 and a per-day fee of $28.
While

Imagine if each of your friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter played a role in your banking experience. By the middle of this year, a new type of bank hopes to make that a reality. MovenBank, a new type of institution set to launch in mid-2012, wants to change the way you pay for

I’ve been writing a lot about prepaid debit cards recently, much of it critical, echoing some of the same issues many in the financial press have with prepaid cards, including relatively high fees, limited features and a lack of meaningful savings accounts.
But I do believe prepaid cards represent both an increasingly popular alternative to traditional

Financial scammers who repeatedly victimize active-duty U.S. military personnel, veterans and their families are the target of a new database being developed by four government agencies.
The Repeat Offenders Against Military database, known as “ROAM,” will track completed enforcement actions against companies and individuals who repeatedly scam military personnel, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,

It looks like a high school in Naples, Fla., is taking a really cool approach to teaching job skills and personal finance savvy to students: opening an in-school credit union branch.
From the Naples Daily News:
Math teacher Nancy DeFurio asked Suncoast to start a Naples student branch after seeing something similar in New York. She wanted

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about romance.
But for some sad lonely hearts, the holiday turns out to be a financial scam, rather than true love.
Indeed, social media and online dating frauds are so widespread that the national Better Business Bureau included the category in its list of the Top Ten Financial Scams of 2011.
And