Banking

Bloomberg Developments in fintech could boost the UK’s sluggish productivity growth and the Bank of England has started a unit to monitor its developments, Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden said. “We have set up a new Fintech Hub that will sit at the heart of the bank, to consider both how the bank understands and how it applies fintech, relevant to ...

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank left its benchmark interest rate at a record low as it forecast inflation will remain inside the target band this year and in 2019. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas held the overnight borrowing rate at 3 percent, it said in a statement in Manila, as predicted by 11 of 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The rest ...

Bloomberg Two regional Federal Reserve bank presidents said they favour raising interest rates twice more this year following a hike this week, but were open to shifting their views if the outlook warranted a different policy approach. “My forecast had three moves for this year,’’ Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, who votes this year on monetary policy, told reporters after ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank is making sure its bond-buying program doesn’t run into any problems in Germany in the final stretch. Six months before purchases are currently set to expire, the ECB added seven German regional development agencies to the list of institutions whose debt is eligible for quantitative easing. The expansion was done at the request of the ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp.’s corporate and investment banking division agreed to pay $42 million to settle a New York state probe into a so-called masking scheme in which it misled clients about who was seeing and filling their orders and who was trading in its dark pool. Bank of America Merrill Lynch for years, starting in 2008, had trading ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. considers itself a leader among banks fighting climate change. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon lauded the 2015 global Paris accord, and the bank has committed to buying and financing clean energy, as well as reducing its coal-industry work. Yet the bank is the top US lender and financier to oil-sands producers and pipeline companies, according ...

Bloomberg Japan’s key inflation gauge ticked up in February, putting the Bank of Japan halfway to its goal of 2 percent. Yet a strengthening yen and the threat of a global trade war underscore the central bank’s vulnerability to global markets and events. Despite the progress made, inflation remains far from the BOJ’s target, while the yen’s 7 percent gain ...

Bloomberg Kenya’s biggest bank by market value is not giving up an inch as lenders go head-to-head with the government over what they can charge customers. The introduction of interest-rate caps in late 2016 has caused lending to grind to a near halt, spurring the International Monetary Fund to warn that growth in East Africa’s largest economy could suffer if ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England is piloting anonymous job applications to promote diversity. The more than three-century old central bank only appointed its first female senior official in 1988, according to a speech by Chief Operating Officer Joanna Place at an event in London. It’s one of a handful of new measures to boost the proportion of women at that ...

Bloomberg Most Asian central banks will stand pat for now, even with the Federal Reserve poised to raise borrowing costs this week. While previous tightening cycles in the US prompted many Asian nations to move in lockstep, things are different this time. Subdued inflation and healthy foreign reserves reduce the need to move quickly and the risk of a trade ...