Government

Chicago's Covenant Bank is the third FDIC-insured institution to close this year, the agency announced. According to a release from FDIC, Liberty Bank and Trust Company in New Orleans has agreed to assume all of the deposits of the failed bank and will purchase essentially all of the assets.

Citing changes in regulatory reform due to Dodd-Frank as the driving factor, Edward Jones Mortgage, based in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, will close its doors permanently in April. The office has been writing residential mortgages since 1998 and ceased writing them in January.

In Pittsburgh, PNC Financial Services Group's board of directors elected president William S. Demchak as director and announced that he will succeed chairman James E. Rohr as CEO. The board held the election in response to Rohr's desire to step down as CEO at the company's 2013 Annual Meeting of Shareholders on April 23 and his intention to retire from the company and the board next year.

Ellie Mae, a leading provider of enterprise-level, on-demand automated solutions for the residential mortgage industry, announced that Jonathan Corr has been promoted to company president. In his role, Corr will be responsible for managing Ellie Mae's day-to-day operations. He will also continue to serve as COO and will keep reporting to Sig Anderman, the company's chairman and CEO.

Deloitte's Consumer Spending Index declined for the third straight month in January, the company reported. The index, which tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future spending, fell to 3.87 from a previous reading of 3.93. Patricia Buckley, director of economic policy and analysis at Deloitte and author of the monthly index, explained the decrease is "primarily due to slowing increases of new home prices," though gradual improvements in initial unemployment claims and real wages may reverse the downward trend in the future.

Conditions are ripe for home values in 2013, according to January national housing data collected by Realtor.com.

In Michigan, Flagstar Bancorp, Inc., announced an agreement to sell the assets of DocVelocity, its document imaging business for mortgage lenders, to Capsilon, a provider of cloud-based sharing, imaging, and collaboration services for mortgage lenders.

One real estate consulting firm has noticed a substantial divide between housing starts and completions and points to labor as the major factor.

United States Appraisals, a nationwide appraisal management company based in Kansas, named Richard Garrie as chief appraiser. Garrie has more than 17 years of residential valuation experience, including eight years as a branch manager for Forsythe Appraisals, LLC.

ORNL Federal Credit Union (FCU), the largest credit union in East Tennessee, announced it has entered into an agreement to purchase land to be used for a new full service branch in 2014. The announcement follows a tremendous year of growth for the credit union, which saw a 15 percent increase in its customer loan portfolio and a more than 12 percent growth in all loans in 2012.