OCC

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is overstepping its authority in granting charters to fintechs and other companies that don’t take deposits.

Jelena McWilliams's term as FDIC chair expires in 2023, and she cannot be removed by an incoming president. But if Joe Biden prevails, he may ask her to stay — and if she does, governing a Democratic-majority board would be a very different proposition.

Mary Mack is expected to say that other employees were scared of Carrie Tolstedt, according to the bank’s regulators. Tolstedt, one of five former Wells executives facing civil charges in connection with the bank’s phony-accounts scandal, could be fined as much as $25 million.

The bank has begun briefing regulators about how it mistakenly sent payments to creditors of Revlon, the financially strapped cosmetics company. Citi has also filed a lawsuit against Brigade Capital Management seeking to recoup $175 million it sent to Brigade on Revlon's behalf.

Senate Democrats asked a watchdog to examine whether the bank regulator failed to investigate claims of discrimination against at least six banks.

The federal banking agencies clarified that minor violations of Bank Secrecy Act rules will typically not result in a cease-and-desist order.

Appearing to support decentralized systems, the acting comptroller of the currency said on a podcast that "the ultimate public ownership of the payment rails is when you have a network, like the internet, of interconnected institutions and computers."

The regulator announced in June it would use call report data from before the crisis to calculate bank assessment fees in September, a one-time change.

Whoever wins the White House in November may have immediate agency openings to fill, while a key decision looms about who will run the Federal Reserve after Jerome Powell’s term expires in 2022.

Regulators found fault with the bank’s cloud migration efforts in the years that preceded a 2019 hacking incident.

Just as legal limbo has threatened the agency’s long-running effort to create a fintech license, a charter unique to payments companies could face a court challenge, observers say.

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors, banking law scholars and consumer advocacy organizations filed amicus briefs siding with the New York State Department of Financial Services in its court battle with the federal regulator.

"We can control our destiny," says Colin Walsh, CEO of the challenger bank, which spent more than three years seeking to become a full-fledged bank.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks said the agency plans to issue new assessment procedures within weeks as a follow-up to recent Community Reinvestment Act reforms. He also touched on the “true lender” issue and why the agency is considering a narrow-purpose payments charter.

The complaint filed by New York, California and Illinois argues that the regulation, issued in response to the 2015 Madden decision, undermines state laws intended to protect consumers.

In the same manner as its previous plans for a fintech charter, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency is getting some pushback from banking trade groups on its idea to establish a payments charter.

Seven trade groups said they would fight any effort by the agency to establish a tailored license for payments providers such as PayPal, Stripe and Square.

Financial institutions want to protect customers and employees from the coronavirus but are caught in the middle of a politically charged public health debate. The stance taken by the industry’s largest trade group gives them cover.

Responding to an unnamed bank that had sought the opinion, the regulatory agency issued an interpretive letter clarifying that an institution's custody services can be used for cryptographic keys and other digital currency-related assets.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed weaknesses even at well-established fintechs. They could become more resilient by partnering with traditional financial institutions.