Bank channel

Less than a week after acquiring an Ohio insurer, Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA Inc. announced it bought JFK Consulting Group, LLC, an employee benefits brokerage and consulting firm in Overland Park, Kansas.

Advisors should heed how the bank is leveraging new technology to converse with customers online.

With mergers heating up, Kessel D. Stelling says "every bank has to earn their independence every day." His company, Synovus Financial, paid a steep price toward that end Monday.

As directors and officers of failed banks brace for FDIC lawsuits, an intense legal battle is developing over accessing files at their former institutions.

Fixed annuities sales were steady at $1.1 billion, whereas variable annuities gained $100 million from a month earlier ending November at $1.5 billion, according to data from Kehrer-LIMRA.

The deal, which was announced in October, was priced at $88.57 million inclusive of estimated net assets of the business of $21.75 million.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday reiterated the importance of community banks to the economy and the need to ensure regulatory burdens faced by small banks are minimized.

Smartleaf will help manage more than 40,000 portfolios for America’s fifth largest bank, which becomes its largest provider

As more banks prepare to charge for basic products, a carrot-and-stick strategy with customers may work better than a more punitive approach.

MetLife Bank, a unit of the MetLife Inc., has catapulted from relative obscurity in banking to become the seventh-largest depository and a contender in mortgages.

Consumers’ perception of their own bank remains strong, while overall sentiment about the industry remains sour.

Rarely is bankruptcy court a welcome detour, but more struggling banks may take it to overcome debtholders blocking their recapitalization efforts.

Policymakers' focus on capital may be creating a false sense of security, and it may be overshadowing other, equally important issues that are central to preventing the next crisis.

Wells Fargo Insurance Services USA Inc. announced Wednesday it bought Prestige Professional Plans, a single office, employee benefits insurance brokerage firm located in Dayton, Ohio.

Three years after the last recession began, gathering retail deposits is a game where every bank’s a winner. Even the ones that don’t want to be.

Dave Colby, chief economist at the Credit Union National Association, said the economy is teetering, as consumers continue to deleverage. He projected 2% to 3% credit union loan growth in 2011.

It remains to be seen whether institutions that are in better financial shape than Bank of America and Ally Financial will accept olive branches from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

DWS Investments has had a turbulent history. But its executives say the business is on course to notch its first year of positive net flows in several years.

It's common enough at the beginning of a new year to reflect on where we have been and on where we are headed. A tougher question for the banking industry to answer at the start of 2011 may be: where are we now?

While 2010 was an all-out scramble by Democratic leaders to harness outrage over the financial crisis to push reg reform over the finish line, the legislative outlook for next year ...