Banking Dive

Scotiabank will buy commercial bank Maple Financial Holdings and its subsidiary, MapleMark Bank, for an undisclosed sum, the Toronto-based lender said Friday. https://lnkd.in/eTuczEJf

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is launching a plan next week to end telework for agency employees – with few exceptions – and reassign them to the bureau’s new headquarters, according to a Wednesday memo seen by Banking Dive. https://lnkd.in/eRV-p9d7

Former TD Bank employee Cheungkin Lam, also known as Kelvin Lam, pleaded guilty Thursday to defrauding the lender’s customers and bribing an employee at another bank to falsify bank records, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. https://lnkd.in/ej9VW_-x

Point-of-sale home improvement financing firm GreenSky® will pay $10 million to settle claims that it deceived and exploited senior citizens and disabled people, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday. https://lnkd.in/e624VwQ4

Interesting comment from Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf on AI's impact on human labor: “I find it very surprising when really smart people take one side or the other,” Scharf said during a Wednesday appearance at a Bernstein investor conference. “They sit there and they say, ‘it’s not a threat to employment,’ or they sit there and say, ‘it’s a huge threat to employment.’” “It’s so obvious to me, looking at the way we’re using AI inside the company, it is both of those things,” the CEO of the San Francisco-based bank said. “The risk is that they’re not totally aligned, in terms of the same people and the timing of it.” https://lnkd.in/e5ZdmhFc

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been accused of “revers[ing] 50 years of fair lending protections” by changing how the Equal Credit Opportunity Act is applied, according to court documents filed Wednesday. https://lnkd.in/eZtQDzMd

It’s been two years since Nathan Flatt could access the roughly $10,000 he had accumulated in his account on Yotta, a savings gamification app he used to save money for a pickup truck. Convinced that his funds were insured, encouraged by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) logo on Yotta’s website, he diligently squirreled away $500 a month, until he and others were locked away from accessing their funds after Yotta’s middleware partner, Synapse, went bankrupt. Flatt is one of many former Yotta customers — and customers of Synapse’s other fintech partners, including Juno — cumulatively out millions of dollars. The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation on Friday became the first regulator to fine Yotta for its part in the debacle, fining the fintech $1 million and ordering the company to notify its California-based customers with information on how they may obtain relief from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s civil penalty fund. https://lnkd.in/eAzTWAPk

Digital bank Ally is "for everybody,” but is redefining its target audience as digital natives, “specifically Gen Z and millennials," said Bridget Sponsky (Izor), executive director of brand, sponsorship and creative marketing. The bank last week launched a new brand platform and marketing campaign designed to emphasize that and the bank's branchless nature. A billboard covering the side of the Ally building’s parking garage in Charlotte, North Carolina, reads “Actually go to the bank? Bless your heart." “It feels like it really resonates contextually with consumers who are used to doing their banking from their phone,” Sponsky told me. Another Ally billboard, in New York City, speaks to both rival banks and consumers, reading “Cool branch, bro. No branches means more money for you.” (Side note: I snagged this photo Sunday afternoon while in Uptown for a Charlotte Knights game. My 2013 Subaru Forester is just out of frame.) https://lnkd.in/egQrYjSM

Gulfport, Mississippi-based Hancock Whitney Corp. will acquire OFB Bancshares and its subsidiary, One Florida Bank, in a $377.6 million, all-cash deal set to close in the third quarter, the banks said Friday. https://lnkd.in/eVFUEN4T

Pittsburgh-based PNC tapped JPMorganChase veteran Tim Ferriter, CFA to drive the retail bank’s investment agenda focused on client acquisition and the delivery of new capabilities and hospitality to its products. https://lnkd.in/eq3XEqrg