Financial Services

San Francisco – – October 02, 2026 -- GoodLeap, LLC has closed a $434 million securitization backed solely by home improvement loans it originated, marking the sixth such issuance for the fintech lender.

GoodLeap Home Improvement Solutions Trust 2026-2 secures $434 million in principal balance

The transaction, GoodLeap Home Improvement Solutions Trust 2026-2, was sponsored by Bank of America, N.A., with BofA Securities, Inc. acting as sole structuring agent. Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Fitch Ratings both rated the securitization. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, CIBC World Markets Corp., and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. served as joint bookrunners.

New York – – September 30, 2026 -- S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) will release its third quarter 2026 financial results on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, via news release at approximately 7:15 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

Executives to host investor call at 8:30 a.m. EDT on October 27

President and CEO Martina Cheung, Chief Financial Officer Eric Aboaf, and Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer Mark Grant will lead a conference call and webcast to discuss the quarterly results. The presentation is open to all interested parties and may include forward-looking statements. Presenters' slides and a supplemental deck will be posted to the company's investor relations website.

Chicago – October 02, 2026 -- Setara Financial Corp. has advanced development of its Reference Layer, a benchmark and reference-data infrastructure designed to bring standardized measurement to the fragmented global compute market.

Compute market data remains scattered across hardware, providers and geographies

As artificial intelligence drives investment in GPUs, data centers, power and connectivity, compute has become a critical economic input, yet pricing and performance information remains fragmented across disconnected proprietary data sets. Setara's architecture starts with a governed data model built to standardize heterogeneous compute-market information before it enters benchmark calculation.

Stamford, Connecticut – October 02, 2026 -- Steward Partners placed three senior executives as finalists in the 2026 Wealth Management Industry Awards, drawing national attention across leadership, compliance and M&A categories in a single cycle.

Three executives earn simultaneous finalist status across distinct disciplines

CEO Jim Gold was named a finalist for CEO of the Year among firms managing more than $25 billion in assets. Chief Compliance Officer Rob Guldner was recognized as a finalist for CCO of the Year, while Scott Danner earned a finalist nod for M&A Leader of the Year.

San Diego – – October 02, 2026 -- A national survey of 5,000 U.S. adults has found that Americans rate a family birthday party as a more awkward setting for discussing inheritance than a funeral, upending assumptions about when families confront estate planning. Trust & Will's 2026 Death & Inheritance Report found 63% of respondents call a birthday the most awkward occasion for the conversation, compared with 41% for a funeral or wake and just 32% for an ordinary phone call.

Christmas ranks as both the top trigger and the top occasion families avoid

Christmas is the most common holiday prompt for inheritance discussions, cited by 16% of respondents, yet it is simultaneously the occasion Americans most actively avoid for the same topic, at 37% -- more than double any other occasion and the top avoidance answer in all 50 states.

Toronto – October 01, 2026 -- Manulife Financial Corporation has closed a reinsurance transaction transferring biometric risk on a block of long-term care policies carrying $3.2 billion in reserves to Munich American Reassurance Company, a US subsidiary of Munich Re Group.

Manulife offloads $3.2 billion in long-term care reserves to Munich Re Life US

The deal shifts biometric risk exposure tied to the long-term care block off Manulife's balance sheet and onto Munich Re Life US, a subsidiary specializing in life and disability reinsurance for North American carriers. The transaction was first announced on August 5, 2026, and has now reached formal closing.

Las Vegas – October 01, 2026 -- Bold Penguin, the Digital Broker for commercial insurance, has entered a global strategic partnership with bolttech, an insurtech operating in 39 countries across four continents, to build a joint commercial and personal lines offering for agents, insurers and embedded partners in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Bold Penguin's U.S. customers gain access to bolttech's personal lines tools through one interface

The deal combines Bold Penguin's Digital Exchange, which matches commercial risks to best-fit markets from submission through real-time quote and digital bind, with bolttech's embedded distribution network and AI-enabled workflows spanning personal and commercial lines. Bold Penguin also contributes its DeX ai intelligence layer and integrated commercial carrier network to the arrangement.

Toronto – – October 01, 2026 -- Info-Tech Research Group has appointed Kim Chanderbir as Senior Managing Partner II for Financial & Professional Services, adding more than 30 years of executive leadership experience to its advisory bench as demand grows for outcomes-driven consulting in regulated sectors.

Chanderbir has managed portfolios exceeding $550 million across global markets

Her career spans financial services, insurance, fintech, SaaS, technology, government, and healthcare, where she led enterprise modernization, managed services, and client success mandates. She has overseen teams of more than 1,000 professionals across North America, EMEA, APAC, LATAM, and Japan.

Stamford, Conn. – October 01, 2026 -- Steward Partners added six advisor teams managing a combined $2.2 billion in client assets during the third quarter of 2026, with five of the six joining through the firm's M&A channel.

Five teams join via acquisition, underscoring consolidation demand among independent advisors

American Financial Advisors, led by Mike Stark in Georgia, brought approximately $1 billion in client assets, the largest addition of the quarter. O'Neill Wealth Management in New Jersey contributed roughly $426 million, followed by Sapphire Blue Advisors in Michigan with about $305 million. KM Private Wealth, led by Kyle Martin in Alabama, added $194 million, while Axiom Capital Wealth Management, led by Bob Phinney in Massachusetts, brought $191 million. Integrity Financial Services, led by Jeff Seitz in Washington, joined through Steward's traditional affiliation model with $116 million in assets.

San Jose, Calif. – October 01, 2026 -- AppZen has launched ZenLM Plus, a family of finance-specialized large language models that outperformed seven frontier AI models on expense audit accuracy while cutting inference costs, the company announced.