BANKING

Guidelines Offered for Out-of-State Bank Branches: The proposed system was unveiled by an advisory group that said it is laying out a road map for more-efficient banking. “The guidelines seek to create a system of seamless supervision for multistate banking organizations that ensures safety and soundness and provides a single point of contact between a bank and its regulators,” said James Hansen, head of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and also Nebraska’s chief banking regulator. A federal law enacted last year is designed to reduce the cost of interstate expansion by permitting a bank holding company to consolidate into a single, multistate bank, eliminating the costs of maintaining separate boards and officers for a series of banks.