Bank of America places new restriction on remote work
As the COVID-19 pandemic drifts further into the rearview mirror, even the most flexible banks are quietly tightening their return-to-office policies.
Almost all JPMorganChase employees are on-site five days a week. So are the staff at Truist Financial.And in the latest example, Bank of America’s employees will soon be barred from working from home two days in a row.
Compared to other big lenders in the post-pandemic period, the nation’s second-largest bank has maintained a relatively flexible hybrid work policy. Since 2022, client-facing workers at BofA have been required to work at the office all week, but other employees — who make up a majority of the 211,000-person workforce — have retained the right to work any two weekdays from home. Now that’s about to change — slightly.More here.
NC bank’s latest deal fits its Atlanta-to-Richmond plan
HomeTrust Bancshares in Asheville, North Carolina, is gaining coveted scale in Virginia — a key part of its Southeast growth strategy— by acquiring a struggling bank in Richmond.
The parent company of HomeTrust Bank agreed to buy Blue Ridge Bankshares in an all-stock transaction valued at around $448.1 million. The deal, which is expected to close early in the first quarter of 2027, would nearly double the size of HomeTrust’s branch network, boost its assets to roughly $7 billion and push its market valuation beyond $1 billion.
The deal accelerates HomeTrust’s earnings-per-share targets by four years, Hunter Westbrook, the bank’s president and CEO, told American Banker.More here.
New York bank regulator says vendor flaw hit its firms
The software flaw at the center of a warning last week by New York’s financial regulator might have reached at least one bank.
The New York State Department of Financial Services, or NYDFS, is “aware of impact to a limited number of covered entities and are working closely with them to ensure that consumers are protected,” a department spokesperson told American Banker.
Covered entities are the firms the department licenses or charters: state-chartered banks, insurers and other financial companies. American Banker independently identified one such potentially impacted company: Sawyer Savings Bank in Saugerties, New York.More here.
Crypto negotiators sign on to bill to ban Trump-backed trust
Lead Democratic negotiators have signed onto a bill that would ban bank regulators from approving charter applications closely linked to the president.
On Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved a national trust charter application from World Liberty Financial, a crypto company controlled by the Trump family. The lawmakers, led by Senate Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., floated the legislation in response to that approval.
The legislation itself is unlikely to gain any Republican support this Congress, which would be necessary as Republicans control both chambers of Congress. But the cosigners of the legislation include Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., who are leading negotiations for Democrats on the crypto market structure bill, CLARITY Act. More here.
With industry consolidation looming, Block refreshes business payments
As payments giant Stripe appears set to invest billions to acquire PayPal and AI firm OpenRouter, elsewhere in the industryBlock is making a separate move to improve its business payments technology.
Square, which is Block’s business-facing division, has updated its Square Credit Card to enable sellers to pay vendors through Square Bill Pay. This adds options beyond cards, including ACH or check. It’s also a key move to bolster Block’s business-facing operations, one of the company’s two major lines, along with consumer payments and Cash App, which consumers and business customers use.
“It’s a credit and a B2B platform. You can pay your vendors, suppliers, rent and others … and you can do it digitally whether your vendor accepts a credit card or not,” Andrea Raj, head of product for Square Money, told American Banker. More here.
