Armed with insight and tailored educational outreach, these banks are catering to nontraditional customers that, in turn, boost their bottom lines. (ABA Banking Journal)

"Renting is the new buying." That became a kind of mantra after the housing crisis. Many Americans stopped believing that owning a home was a way to build wealth and there were far fewer first-time home buyers. That's still the case today; last year, only 32 percent of all home buyers were first-timers. But there are signs that young people are warming once again to the idea of owning their own home. In fact, more than one-third of all home buyers these days are 35 and younger. (NPR)

Time after time, research shows that men and women are different creatures when it comes to the business of their money. For example, because of different approaches to investing and a tendency to panic less, women tend to do more research and get slightly better returns on their investments than men. But a recent survey also found a disconnect between what women want and what is available to them in the general financial services market. (Forbes)

Earlier this week, General Electric formally asked to be released from federal supervision, saying it has sufficiently shrunk its once-massive financial-services arm so it would no longer pose a systemic threat to the banking system. (Wall Street Journal)

Mobile banking use continued to grow in 2015, according to a survey released this week by the Federal Reserve. Forty-three percent of mobile phone owners surveyed in November 2015 reported using mobile banking services in the previous year, up from 39 percent in 2014. More than half of smartphone owners reported using mobile banking. These figures were amplified by the growing share of smartphones, which rose from 71 percent to 77 percent of all mobile phones. (ABA Banking Journal)

Colorado’s marijuana businesses are still largely shut out of the banking sector, meaning they have to rely on armored trucks and security guards to ferry cash. That poses a public-safety concern, officials say. (Wall Street Journal)

U.S. private employers added 200,000 jobs in March, above economists' expectations, a report by payrolls processor ADP showed this week. Economists had forecast the ADP National Employment Report would show a gain of 194,000 jobs, with estimates ranging from 150,000 to 220,000. Private payroll gains in the month earlier were revised down to 205,000 from an originally reported 214,000 increase. (Reuters)

Regulators must better clarify their expectations for risk-sensitive models used to determine regulatory capital levels for the largest banks, ABA VP Hugh Carney wrote in an American Banker op-ed today. Recently, he wrote, regulators have begun to place greater emphasis on simpler, across-the-board capital standards — regardless of asset risk — rather than the risk-based models outlined under Basel II’s advanced approaches. (ABA Banking Journal)

The nation’s leading retail trade group is once again pushing the Federal Reserve to lower the amount banks charge merchants for debit card transactions. The National Retail Federation (NRF) said the cap set five years ago under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is too high and in a letter this week, asked the Fed for a lower cap when it is reviewed this spring. (The Hill)

The Federal Reserve looks to have outsourced monetary policy to the financial markets -- and that may not necessarily be bad. Fed Chair Janet Yellen told the Economic Club of New York this week that policy makers had scaled back the number of interest rate increases they expect to carry out this year after investors did the same. (Bloomberg)

A top U.S. banking regulator wants to find a better way to oversee new technologies such as blockchain and companies including LendingClub Corp. and On Deck Capital Inc. that are helping to transform the financial services industry. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is moving to establish a framework for regulating the fintech industry, which includes everything from digital currencies to online lending and mobile payments systems. (Bloomberg)