Home » Banking & Finance

Banking & Finance

Articles

Web rates get banks’ attention: Some try to compete by boosting savings yields

In an effort to lure new customers, more traditional banks are beginning to emulate their Internet adversaries and offer online savings accounts boasting much higher annual yields. Customers are increasingly turning to Internet banks because they offer highyield savings accounts that don’t require massive balances. First Internet Bank of Indiana, founded in 1998 by local tech entrepreneur David Becker as the first state-chartered Internetonly bank, has seen its assets grow to more than $530 million in less than a decade…

Read More

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: Signs of economic trouble are beginning to surface

There is a character in an old Hunter S. Thompson novel who shows up in every scene sweating profusely. Halfway through the book, he finally explains it-sweating is normal. It’s when he stops sweating that the alarm bells should sound. It’s a little like that with bankers. Except it’s not literally sweat, but worry. Bankers are always worried-about loan quality, interestrate spreads, renewed inflation, you name it. After all, the banking business is really business in general. How we collectively…

Read More

Interactive poised to make incentives pay: Communications software-maker to add 637 jobs

Interactive Intelligence Inc. has come full circle. On May 2, Marion County’s Metropolitan Development Commission was slated to review a 10-year property tax abatement for the communications software maker. If the incentive is approved, Interactive Intelligence plans to use it to hire 637 people at an average of $32.50 per hour. According to its filings with the city, the company also will build a $15 million, 154,000-square-foot building next door to its current headquarters near Interstate 465 and West 71st…

Read More

BEHIND THE NEWS: Housing slowdown roils state’s mortgage industry

Home lending might sound like a staid business. But anyone weathering the changes now sweeping through the Indiana mortgage market knows otherwise. Last year, we saw the sale of two huge Indiana-based home lenders-Fort Wayne-based Waterfield Mortgage and Fishers-based Irwin Mortgage. Also sold was Carmel-based Oak Street Mortgage, which not long ago had been a high-flier poised to go public. These weren’t cases of owners cashing out at the top of the market. Quite the contrary. Irwin Mortgage had become…

Read More

Charity sees hope in Third World ‘micro’ lending

In the village of Armenia, in western El Salvador, the Barahona Bautista family last month got a $246 loan to start a pig
farm from Ambassadors for Children. Micro loans are new to Ambassadors, which assists children in more than a dozen countries.

Read More

Broadbent’s new era: Veteran real estate firm known for strip centers prepares for new headquarters, new leadership

The distinctive black-and-white façade of the Zipper Building at Washington Street and Virginia Avenue is gone, stripped away like ceiling tiles from an old bedroom. Replacing the unusual exterior of the three-story structure will be a more traditional brick and stone look-and a new moniker bearing the name of owner The Broadbent Co. Broadbent, the longtime developer of retail strip centers including Castleton Plaza, Clearwater Crossing and Fashion Mall Commons bought the downtown building last October and is set to…

Read More

Invoice-borrowing a growing credit option

Bank loans and credit cards are common solutions to small businesses’ cash-flow crunches, but small-business owners increasingly
have another option: using unpaid invoices as collateral to borrow money from investors.

Read More

Virtual bank making ‘solid’ move into lending: First Internet Bancorp. expands into mortgages with Landmark acquisition

Online banks usually avoid brick-and-mortar overhead. Eliminating expense is the core of their business advantage. So why did First Internet Bancorp spend $12 million to acquire traditional mortgage lender and savings bank Landmark Financial Corp. and its two Indianapolis branches? Because the acquisition of Landmark provides First Internet an opportunity to finally broach the mortgage market. Landmark, which traces its roots back to 1925, is best known as a new-construction underwriter in the local home and commercial builder market. Its…

Read More

Banks quick to embrace remote checking: Customers get on board as more institutions allow checks to be scanned, transmitted, deposited electronically

ATMs are still convenient, but not much of a novelty anymore. That distinction now belongs to remote-deposit capture-a high-tech advancement that guarantees a big payoff for banks and their customers alike. “From a technological standpoint, it’s the biggest thing happening in banking in 2007,” said Lee Wetherington, senior vice president at Brentwood, Tenn.-based software maker Goldleaf Financial Inc. Remote-deposit capture eliminates the need for businesses to physically deposit checks at their bank branch. Using the new technology, checks are scanned…

Read More

State’s financial institutions leader quietly blazes trail: Appointment of Rice puts a credit union leader in top spot for first time; bankers group withholds judgment

Rick Rice’s ascension to chairman of the Indiana Department of Financial Institutions typically would be the type of lowkey government appointment that invokes nary a murmur of opposition. Why would it when current affairs facing the sevenmember panel are as harmless as allowing state-chartered financial institutions to charge patrons who wish to skip a loan payment? Yet, Rice’s selection in late January as head of the DFI board has the credit union community gushing with pride, and the banking industry…

Read More

Bowland Solutions Assessing a niche: Online job reviews help firm build global client base

Sometimes it’s hard to tell who hates performance reviews more-managers or employees. But what if the timeworn paper-based annual assessment were replaced with a Web-based process that allows managers to consistently evaluate employees’ skills against company goals? Indianapolis-based Bowland Solutions has come up with just such an alternative, and it has helped the firm build a client roster that includes heavyweights like international banking giant HSBC, music purveyor Virgin Megastores, global pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline and Earthbound Farm, North America’s largest…

Read More

XM-Sirius merger is threat to local HD radio: Local broadcasters hustle to launch digital channels

The news of a potential merger between New York-based Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and Washington, D.C.-based XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. comes at a critical time for local radio station operators. If the merger draws more listeners, that clearly would be bad news for terrestrial radio stations already dealing with the Internet and Ipod, and could imperil their fledgling high-definition initiative. Already, the proposed $11.4 billion merger is getting lots of media attention, and that’s bound to raise satellite radio’s…

Read More

WellPoint banks on the popularity of HSAs: Insurer moves to start bank, offer medical financing

To do so the Indianapolis-based health insurer is moving to start its own bank, whose initial role will be to hold and manage its customers’ health savings accounts. An HSA is a relatively new breed of health insurance that places money-and more responsibility-in consumers’ hands. Well-Point bets more and more of its customers will start such accounts in the future. “We expect to see continued strong growth for these products. There is a tremendous amount of interest in the marketplace…

Read More

Banks squeeze into Hamilton County

At least 35 new bank branches have sprouted in Hamilton County in the last three years, and more are on the way. Familiar
names like Charter One and Chase have added eight and seven branches, respectively. Other institutions are entering the market.

Read More

STATEHOUSE DISPATCH: This finally may be the year for property tax reform

Brace yourself for lots of action in the next two weeks, as the deadlines approach for bills originating in the House to be passed to the Senate, and vice versa. While this is a long session of the General Assembly and one might assume this would lead to more deliberative contemplation, the extra days do not seem to make much difference as deadlines approach. Some of the larger issues that require more massaging and compromise tend not to be drafted…

Read More

City Securities aims to earn mega-deal: If approved, $450 million bond plan would pay off pre-1977 police, fire pensions

If Mayor Bart Peterson gets his wish, a $450 million bond issue finally will settle Indianapolis’ long-standing dilemma over underfunded police and firefighter pensions once and for all. It will also generate up to $9 million in professional fees. And locally based City Securities Corp. is laying the groundwork to earn a lion’s share-even though investment banking is dominated by giant companies in Manhattan. “I would assume that most of Wall Street has made a call,” said City Securities Vice…

Read More

Buyout boom isn’t all bad for Hoosiers

Announcements that major Indiana companies have been acquired are traditionally met with trepidation. But a rash of recent
buyouts of Indiana companies shows they’re not always bad news.

Read More

Successful software veteran forms investment firm: Mark Hill’s $5 million underwrites startup BlueLock

When local IT entrepreneur Mark Hill sold his banking software company in August 2005, he emphasized the potential upside for the area entrepreneurial community. Now he’s making good on his word. Not content to bask on a beach somewhere, Hill has organized an Indianapolisbased private investment company called Collina Ventures. With $10 million under management-all provided by Hill-Collina already has made its first investment. This month, it risked $5 million in startup cash to organize Indianapolis-based Blue-Lock LLC, a computer-hosting…

Read More

Local sign makers enjoy brisk business thanks to bank mergers

Bank mergers have proven lucrative for local sign companies over the years. A string of mergers in the late 1980s and early
1990s wiped out the city’s three big national banks–American Fletcher, Merchants National and Indiana National. In the years
since, the industry has continued to consolidate, spawning a flurry of additional name changes.

Read More

‘Old fashioned’ values manufacture Motionwear’s growth: Acquisition should fuel leotard-maker’s expansion

It might seem as though the low cost of labor overseas has shifted the entire U.S. textile industry to Asia, never to return. Indianapolis-based leotard-maker Motionwear Inc. proves otherwise. The 120-employee company was acquired this month by the Italian sportswear firm FILA for an undisclosed sum and, as a result, it’s poised to expand locally. Tom Wilson started the company in his attic in 1988 because his daughter Erin, an aspiring dancer, couldn’t find performance apparel she liked in retail…

Read More