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Byline: Harry Terris In a difficult environment for revenue growth, banks looking to control costs are by and large leaving technology budgets alone. Instead, driven by the need to secure [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Digital banking is transforming the industry, nonbank upstarts are rattling at the gates, data security has become as essential as managing interest rate risk, and technology is [...]

Byline: Harry Terris As digital technology has become more fundamental to the business of banking, and as information technology units have become part of the basic fabric of running a [...]

Byline: Harry Terris You win some and you lose some. Flipping through market share statistics shows a riot of steps forward and steps back, with a bank's deposit growth outstripping [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The jump in interest rates in May and June pummeled the value of banks' bond portfolios, but investors have mostly shrugged off the losses. Second-quarter marks against [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Rising interest rates should help banks' profit margins, right? It depends on a number of factors -- not least of all banks' ability to hold the line [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Could the flood tide of deposits of the last few years finally be ebbing?For some banks, the jump in interest rates has been an occasion to reconsider [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Growth in business loans continued to outpace other categories in the second quarter but failed to rebound to the blistering rate that prevailed through most of 2011 [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Amid all the frustration over low interest rates, it might be surprising that bank loans now yield a substantially fatter spread above funding costs than when the [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The business credit card sector, which was on life support near the end of the recession, appears to be strengthening. Unused lines at significant issuers have traveled [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Chargeoff rates dropped at five of the six biggest credit card issuers in the latest monthly reports, defying the usual seasonal increase. The data for May continues [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Go where the growth is. That appears to be the motto of a group of banks that have transformed their loan portfolios. Since the dawn of the [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Lending is still a pretty good business.Intense competition and historically low net interest margins notwithstanding, margins on loans themselves are relatively healthy.Across the industry, loan yields exceeded [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Regulators have been trying to price Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of their dominant shares of the secondary market for home loans. After a pair of [...]

Byline: Harry Terris For bankers earning slim yields on stagnant pools of loans, higher interest rates might seem like a welcome prospect. Net interest margins are complex beasts, however, and [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The latest monthly reports from credit card issuers provide more evidence that loss rates will stay abnormally low longer than thought just a few months ago. Early-stage [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Margin compression once again overpowered loan growth in the first quarter, sapping banks' traditional source of revenue. Net interest income dropped from the fourth quarter at nine [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The ceaseless upward march in bank chief executive pay slowed a bit in 2012. CEO compensation increased by a median 11% in 2012, according to disclosures made [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The nation's mortgage giants remain bogged down in claims arising from reckless lending during the housing bubble. In the first quarter, Bank of America (BAC) recorded its [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Another set of reassuring monthly reports from the major credit card issuers underscores a major theme of the banking industry's first-quarter results: loan loss reserve releases continue [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Bankers on the rubber-chicken circuit sought to lower expectations for lending in the first quarter, and preliminary data bears them out. Commercial loan growth at domestically chartered [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The mortgage industry's leaders are once again betting they can grab a bigger slice of a shrinking pie. The Mortgage Bankers Association has projected refinancing volume will [...]

Byline: Harry Terris When a bank is sold, rivals inevitably see the ensuing tumult as an opportunity to hunt for disgruntled customers. An uptick in deal activity the past few [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Big banks reversed a buildup in long-dated bonds over the last two quarters, a reassuring development given recent worries that they might 'reach for yield.' Smaller competitors [...]

Byline: Harry Terris At U.S. corporations, cash is still king but it has lost a bit of its power. Big business has continued to favor high holdings of bank deposits, [...]

Byline: Harry Terris The chatter about banks and interest rates can be confusing. Bankers talk like they can't wait for rates to rise and bring relief to net interest margins. [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Cost consciousness appears to have an echo in the way banks are configuring their branch networks: the typical office holds more deposits than it used to. Covering [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Home equity lending remains miles away from returning to growth mode, despite anecdotal evidence of a comeback and rising real estate prices that are fortifying loans already [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Credit card delinquencies inched up at most of the Big Six issuers in January. Chargeoff rates generally fell, however, and card portfolios appear likely to extend a [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Growth is hard to come by in the credit card business, but major lenders are sticking with a smaller pool of customers with higher credit scores. Issuers [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Banks have nearly picked the last of the low-hanging earnings fruit. After ten quarters where reductions in loan-loss cushions made up perhaps 10% to 30% of industrywide [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Banks' net interest margins continued to tighten in the fourth quarter. Net interest income, aided by loan growth, held up better. Margins fell from the third quarter [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Banks' increasing reliance on mortgage revenues has put investors on edge over a refinancing wave that will inevitably fade. Strong volume and healthy profit margins appear to [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Credit card delinquencies fell across the board at the Big Six issuers in December, reversing modest increases that had appeared in the preceding months. The deterioration during [...]

Byline: Harry Terris If any businesses have begun shifting cash from banks to money market funds now that unlimited insurance for demand deposits is gone, they've done so modestly so [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Preliminary data suggests bank lending surged in the fourth quarter, notwithstanding the perpetual train-wreck in Washington. Commercial and industrial loan growth rebounded from two quarters of fading [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Large numbers of yield-hungry banks have gorged on municipal bonds, and the industry's overall holdings of the paper have edged up. Since 2008, when the Federal Reserve [...]

Byline: Harry Terris With the clock ticking on unlimited deposit insurance, and chances for an extension slim, which banks have the most to lose? How much money might move without [...]

Byline: Harry Terris That surge in Bank of Americaâs (BAC) Basel III capital ratio didnât come the old-fashioned way. After taking a $1.6 billion hit to settle a lawsuit, the [...]

Byline: Harry Terris As growth in the credit card industry has stalled nationally, a group of small issuers have kept their foot on the gas. Credit available on payment cards [...]

Byline: Harry Terris These banks have outperformed industry averages for years and continued to do so in 2012, avoiding the exceptional losses that often follow exceptional returns. The tables in [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Conventional bank deals have returned as a fixture in the industry in recent quarters. Among targets with less than $1 billion in assets, failed banks have largely [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Hurricane Sandy is likely to stir up credit card delinquencies in the next month or so, but performance remained strong in the most recent batch of reports [...]

Byline: Harry Terris It's still early innings for banks making use of deferred tax assets, and for some institutions it's an open question as to whether these tax benefits will [...]

Byline: Harry Terris As late as March 2007, when home prices were teetering on the lip of a 35 percent collapse, Freddie Mac was telling its doomed investors that competition [...]

Byline: Harry Terris To guess what might happen once unlimited deposit insurance ends, look at how corporations have handled their cash lately. They appear lukewarm about the extra insurance, and [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Citigroup (NYSE: C) bucked the seasonal trend and broke with the rest of the Big Six credit card issuers in September, posting a decline in late payments [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Record mortgage earnings are once again propping up quarterly results, and subjecting banks to crossfire over how long the good times can last. The gap between consumer [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Third-quarter results, which banks will begin reporting Friday, will probably show commercial lending continued to drive growth in balance sheets but momentum slowed from prior periods, according [...]

Byline: Harry Terris Big banksâ interchange revenue appears to be climbing out of the Durbin crater. At banks exempt from the Dodd-Frank price controls, meanwhile, such revenue is speeding along [...]