U.S. Market Close 01/21/2026

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Renting Is Cheaper Than Owning in Every Large U.S. Metro

Renting vs. owning, which is less? According to a new study by LendingTree, U.S. homeowners with a mortgage pay 36.9% more a month than renters.

While down payments are a significant hurdle for consumers, LendingTree said that isn’t where the costs end.

LendingTree is an online marketplace that connects consumers with a network of lenders to compare offers for various financial products such as mortgages, personal loans, auto loans, and credit cards. Rather than being a direct lender itself, LendingTree allows borrowers to shop for the best rates and terms by having lenders compete for their business.

The LendingTree study showed that the median monthly gross rent was $1,487 in 2024, versus $2,035 for median monthly housing costs on homes with a mortgage. That is a monthly gap of $548, or $6,576 annually, and that monthly gap is $50 more than it was in 2023, when the difference was $498, LendingTree said.

Read more at The Mortgage Point

An arbitrary credit card rate cap could restrict credit access

While acknowledging current affordability pressures on families and supporting efforts to lower costs, a new Open Banker op-ed by America’s Credit Unions President/CEO Scott Simpson published Thursday addresses how rigid price controls ignore the real costs and risks of lending and credit access.  

The op-ed points to significant concerns these caps would bring for millions of working Americans, as legislation to impose a 10% credit card rate cap and newly reintroduced bills to mandate changes to the credit card processing system gain attention this week.  

Simpson notes that such caps would make it unprofitable to serve subprime and lower-income borrowers, pushing them out of mainstream credit and toward riskier alternatives, while also dampening consumer spending

“Price controls do not eliminate the cost of credit. They simply shift it,” he writes. “Lending must account for risk and requires the payment of administrative costs and expenses related to adhering to government regulations.”

Read more at Americas Credit Unions

Financial Executives Prioritize Technology, AI, and Disciplined Growth for Resilient Performance

Morristown, N.J. – The Financial Education & Research Foundation (FERF)—the independent nonprofit research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI)—today released the findings of its Financial Executives Priorities 2026 Report, revealing how finance leaders are navigating economic uncertainty with disciplined growth strategies and technology-driven transformation.

Released in partnership with Forvis Mazars, the report captures insights from more than 200 senior finance leaders—including CFOs, CAOs, and controllers—across industries, regions, and company sizes.

The findings explore executive priorities for 2026, top financial strategies, workforce and talent trends, cybersecurity and risk management, and the accelerating role of AI and digital transformation in the finance function.

Read more at Financial Executives International

How to Plug Your Biggest Security Hole: Your Teams' Phones

Security leaders across multiple industries, including banking, have long operated under the belief that if they wrapped enough controls around a mobile device, they could make it “secure.” Multiple approaches — mobile antivirus, mobile device management, mobile application management, compliance checks, and posture scores — are all built on the same flawed premise: that the device can be trusted.

Yet banking is now running straight into the reality that “zero trust” collapses the moment you put trust in the employee’s phone, as mobile devices increasingly become a primary work interface. (A zero trust model assumes no entity, inside or outside the network, is trustworthy by default and requires strict verification.)

This vulnerability looms larger than ever as artificial intelligence methods become available to fraudsters.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Have a tax law question?

Our #IRS Interactive Tax Assistant has answers.

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Jose L. Santiago

Public Affairs Specialist

Tax Outreach, Partnership and Education

Email: jose.l.santiago@irs.gov

IRS Guidance Outlines Eligibility For New Auto Loan Interest Tax Break

The Internal Revenue Service has released proposed regulations clarifying how a new auto loan interest deduction will work, offering dealerships and consumers detailed guidance on which vehicles qualify and under what circumstances buyers can claim the tax break. In a Dec. 31 statement, the IRS explained that the new guidance addresses important eligibility criteria in order to help taxpayers take advantage of this new tax benefit.

The deduction was created by H.R. 1, formally known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which was signed into law in July 2025. The legislation allows borrowers to deduct up to $10,000 a year in interest paid on loans for new vehicles used for personal purposes, provided the vehicle’s final assembly occurred in the United States. The deduction phases down for taxpayers earning more than $100,000 annually, or $200,000 for joint filers. Unlike many tax benefits, the deduction is available even to taxpayers who take the standard deduction rather than itemizing, and it applies to the 2025 through 2028 tax years.

While the law itself applies only to new vehicles whose “original use” begins with the taxpayer, the IRS’ draft regulations, released Jan. 2, outline scenarios in which some vehicles that are not factory-fresh could still qualify. The proposed rules are open for public comment through Feb. 2 on regulations.gov.

Read more at CarPro

How Banks and Fintechs Will Embrace Coexistence, not Competition, in 2026

The outlook for financial services in the year ahead will be marked by two significant trends, according to Phil Goldfeder, CEO of the American Fintech Council.

The first is increasing competition, as a resurgence in new bank charters continues, as fintech players and others go the route of becoming banks.

The second is an expansion in bank-fintech partnerships , as they come together “to reach consumers in new and innovative ways,” says Goldfeder.

Goldfeder’s organization is unusual in that it represents both banks as well as fintech companies. Goldfeder’s own roots are in both industries. Prior to joining AFC, he worked in the top policy post at Cross River, a bank known for banking-as-a-service and related banking-fintech cooperation.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Small Businesses Remain Resilient, But Need Help on Cost Control, Digital Transformation and Succession Planning

Need to Know

• 74% of SMB owners expect revenue increases over the next 12 months, down slightly from 78% in 2024 as business owners balance growth expectations against persistent economic uncertainties.
• 79% of businesses maintained or grew revenues over the past five years, demonstrating resilience through pandemic disruption, supply chain challenges, and interest rate volatility.
• 77% experienced cost increases averaging 18% over the past year, leading 76% to raise prices by an average of 12% — margin compression that challenges profitability and may constrain future investment.
• 91% plan to adopt more digital tools over five years, with strong focus on more digital payment forms (52%), implementing AI (50%), improving employee workflows (47%), and digital-first marketing strategies (45%).

According to the 2025 Business Owner Report, recently published by Bank of America, business owners enter 2026 with steady, measured optimism about their prospects and economic conditions.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Synchrony Financial Is Quietly Rebuilding the Future of Consumer Credit

Synchrony Financial is evolving from a legacy store-card issuer into a full-stack consumer finance and embedded credit platform. Here’s how its products stack up against Discover, Capital One, and fintech challengers.

The New Credit Infrastructure You Probably Use Without Knowing

If you’ve financed a mattress at Sleep Number, grabbed a store card at Lowe’s, or taken a 0% promo on a medical bill, there’s a good chance Synchrony Financial was behind it. The company doesn’t have the glossy consumer brand power of a Chase Sapphire or an Apple Card, but under the hood it powers a vast slice of American point-of-sale credit, private-label cards, and retail financing.

Synchrony Financial is not a single app or card; it’s an ecosystem of credit and savings products, cloud services, and embedded finance rails that plug directly into retailers, healthcare providers, and digital marketplaces. As consumer spending migrates online and retailers scramble to own more of the checkout experience, Synchrony is positioning itself as the invisible operating system for branded credit and installment financing.

Read more at Ad Hoc News

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Point-of-Sale Finance Series: Health Care Financing Compliance, Regulatory, and Privacy Pitfalls — Payments Pros – The Payments Law Podcast: Troutman Pepper Locke

In this crossover episode of Payments Pros and The Consumer Finance Podcast, guest host Taylor Gess dives into the rapidly evolving world of point-of-sale financing for medical and dental procedures with Troutman Pepper Locke Partners Jason Cover, Brent Hoard, and Erin Whaley. They unpack how HIPAA, business associate relationships, and information-sharing structures can impact financing programs in clinical settings. They explore state-level trends in California, Illinois, and New York, including new restrictions on provider involvement in financing, promotional offers, and payments. The discussion also highlights emerging risks around website tracking technologies, payment portals, and wiretapping-style lawsuits targeting digital health and payment ecosystems. Listeners will come away with a practical framework for structuring medical and dental financing arrangements, managing disputes, and anticipating the next wave of state-level regulation and enforcement.

Read more at Troutman Pepper Locke

Consumers Are Ready to Share Their Cashflow Data. Are U.S. Banks Listening?

Executive Summary

• Banking consumers are receptive to sharing their personal financial data, including cashflow, in exchange for better, more personalized products and services.
• Financial institutions in other countries are moving rapidly to respond, embracing open banking to extend customer relationships. But U.S. banks lag, hampered by everything from stodgy technology to weak analytical capabilities.
• Yet consumer-permissioned cashflow insights, including direct deposits and reoccurring payments can help lenders create a more complete picture of a consumer’s creditworthiness, leading to improved performance versus conventional credit data.

A recent survey found 70% of American consumers would be willing to share their banking information for better loan rates, financial tools, or personalized spending insights.

For U.S. banks, this statistic isn’t just a signal; it’s a siren.

Read more at The Financial Brand

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Credit Card Mandates and Caps Hurt Small Businesses, Startups, and the Consumers They Serve

Economists are big on considering and fleshing out unintended consequences. When referencing unintended consequences, we’re talking about the fact that actions undertaken by people, and in particular, by government, can have effects or outcomes that are unintended. So, while various legislation and regulations might have the best of intentions, and sound great to many, the effects often can be harmful and costly.

In the end, good intentions via policy actions don’t necessarily lead to intended, positive outcomes. To limit unintended consequences, actions based on political assumptions and rhetoric must be considered more substantively, including testing such actions and their intentions against sound economics and market realities.

Unfortunately, another example of the ills of unintended consequences is at hand with various legislative attacks launched against credit cards. Namely, U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) have pushed legislation that would impose credit card payments routing mandates. And Senators Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), now with the support of President Trump, have advocated for a government-mandated cap on credit card interest rates at 10 percent.

Read more at Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council

Women in FinTech: Break Barriers, Build Better Products

This webinar embarks on a candid discussion about the role of women in fintech: how to empower leaders and rising talent, break persistent barriers, and propel innovation that serves more customers.

Hear lived career journeys, honest reflections on the state of diversity, and concrete changes the industry must make so women can thrive. We’ll focus on actions that translate into better products, stronger teams and measurable progress.

Key takeaways:

• Career journeys in focus: navigating entry, growth, pivots and leadership transitions
• Breaking barriers: practical tactics to counter bias, build allyship and open access to capital and opportunity
• Innovating for inclusion: designing products and services that earn trust and widen financial access
• Changing the system: policies that drive equity, for example, pay, promotion, flexibility, caregiver support and safe cultures
• Measuring impact: metrics and accountability for representation, retention, pay equity and customer outcomes

Read more at FINTECH MAGAZINE

Contact Chuck.Sockol@mcrc.biz to discuss your recovery needs

Remittances Become Ecuador’s Top Source of Foreign Currency in Q3 2025

Remittances sent by Ecuadorian migrants became the country’s largest source of foreign currency inflows in the third quarter of 2025, according to data released by the Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE). Between July and September, Ecuador received $2.012 billion in remittances, marking a new historical high for a single quarter, according to a report by El Universo.

Cumulatively, remittance inflows reached $5.737 billion between January and September 2025, representing a 20.7% increase compared to the same period in 2024, when remittances totaled $4.753 billion. The year-over-year increase amounted to $984.2 million, the Central Bank reported.

The BCE attributed the sustained growth in remittances primarily to uncertainty surrounding U.S. immigration policy and to commercial strategies implemented by money transfer institutions aimed at improving the efficiency and security of remittance flows. Additionally, higher wages among Latin American and Caribbean migrants in the United States also played a role.

Read more at Latina Republic

How to Send Money to Colombia

Sending money to Colombia is easier than one might think. With the evolution of digital banking and payment applications, transferring funds has become more accessible globally, including in Colombia. Whether you prefer cash pickup, bank transfer, or mobile app transfer, leading money transfer operators are present and available in Colombia, making the process of sending money to the country more convenient.

To optimize money transfers, it is important to consider the availability of your payment operator in both your country and Colombia, and the ease with which the recipient can collect the funds. Considering these critical factors, here are the most efficient and popular options for money transfers to Colombia.

Read more at Colombia One

What a New York Fed Study Reveals About Credit Rationing, Consumer Access, and the Policy Error Behind New York’s Usury Push  

The most persistent criticism of rent-to-own (RTO) is also its weakest: that the model exists only because it charges more than traditional credit. Remove high-cost credit, critics argue, and RTO collapses. Cap prices, force transactions into lending law, and consumers will be better off. 

A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quietly demolishes that premise. 

Not by studying rent-to-own directly. Not by defending the industry. But by documenting, with modern data and careful econometrics, what actually happens when lawmakers impose interest-rate caps on consumer finance markets. 

The answer is not what RTO critics assume. 

Read more at RTOHQ

One Bank Cut Lending Decisions From Weeks to Hours. Here’s How.

Three years into the Gen AI revolution, most financial institution strategists — especially those at small and midsized banks and credit unions — continue to advocate for test-and-learn adoption, starting small and advancing cautiously.

While that’s wise counsel, it’s only half the story. As much as experimentation and incremental progress matter, AI is far likelier to fulfill its promise when deployed enterprise-wide and with strategic purpose. Pilot programs will doubtless give confidence to your compliance team and comfort to your marketing chief, but applying AI at scale can unlock value and position even small players to seize new competitive advantages.

“AI’s payoff comes when you think big and think strategically,” said Chris Harrison, Industry Executive Director for Financial Services at Oracle. Harrison has worked alongside a broad cross-section of financial institutions, across live deployments and at deep-dive sessions hosted as part of the Oracle AI Experience series.

Read more at The Financial Brand

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Minimum Wages in 50 U.S. States & 35 Countries, Adjusted for Living Costs

Key Takeaways

• After adjusting for inflation and price differences, statutory minimum wages in leading high-income economies—including Germany, Australia, and France—are higher than all 50 U.S. states.
• Under the same metrics D.C., Connecticut, Washington, and Arizona have the highest statutory minimum wages in the U.S.
• U.S. states following the federal minimum wage (which hasn’t moved since 2008), cluster at the bottom end of this ranking, closer to upper-middle-income economies like Colombia and Peru.
• And despite them following the same minimum ($7.25/hr), their real values diverge after adjusting for cost of living.
• Finally, these figures are gross (pre-tax, pre-tips) statutory figures. European taxes tend to be higher than the U.S. states, and tipping culture is mostly absent, which may affect actual take-home

Read more at VISUALCAPITALIST.CO

Lawmakers Ax $11.7 Billion in IRS Funding in Spending Plan

Lawmakers are seeking to ax nearly $12 billion more in IRS funding in a bipartisan spending plan released early Tuesday.

Proposed legislation funding the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related agencies includes a rescission of $11.66 billion in the extra Biden-era funding from the IRS in fiscal year 2026.

Lawmakers are racing to complete spending bills to avoid a partial government shutdown when current authority runs out Jan. 30.

Republicans have been slowly clawing back the nearly $80 billion in new funding the IRS got in the Democrats’ 2022 tax-and-climate law. It was money the agency was using to modernize, go after tax cheats, and improve customer service after decades of underfunding.

Read more at Bloomberg Law

Evaluate Your AI Vendors Like a Regulator Is Watching, Because They Are

AI vendor selection is harder than it looks: Some banks move at breakneck speed, piloting every shiny new tool. Others spend months in risk assessments while competitors push ahead. Only a few find the middle ground: adopting AI with both urgency and discipline. Getting there means asking new questions that most vendor evaluation processes haven’t been updated to handle.

The pressure is real: Roughly half of financial institutions are piloting or implementing generative AI and 8-in-10 bankers worry that not doing so means falling behind. But regulators don’t care about competitive anxiety or vendor promises. They care about explainability and transparency, about whether banks can truly understand, trust and defend the systems making decisions on their behalf. And if we’re making guesses on what the next buzzword in AI regulation will be, it’s actionability. Actionability raises the practical question: can your bank ensure that AI reasoning processes are sufficiently observable to enable timely diagnosis and remediation when failures occur?

Read more at The Financial Brand

Teen entrepreneurship is the next front door for credit unions

400+ survey responses revealed a simple truth: teens want entrepreneurship—and 75% don’t know what a credit union is.

When I was 12, my biggest concerns were video games and trying not to get in trouble for my grades. “Financial wellness” was the furthest thing from my mind.

Then one sentence changed my trajectory.

I had a pen pal who casually mentioned his school was teaching computer programming. My brain lit up: Wait, you can learn to make this stuff?

Read more at CUInsight

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