Federal District Court Rules OCC Lacks Authority to Issue FinTech Charters

On May 2, 2019, a court in the Southern District of New York held that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency lacked the statutory authority to charter nondepository special purpose national banks.

In denying, with one exception, the OCC’s motions to dismiss claims by New York’s Department of Financial Services, the Court held that the OCC could not charter a nondepository “national bank” because the National Bank Act “unambiguously requires that, absent a statutory provision to the contrary, only depository institutions are eligible to receive national bank charters from the OCC.”

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