The OCC’s New FinTech National Banking Charter

On Friday, December 2nd, Comptroller Thomas J. Curry of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) announced that the OCC will move forward with chartering financial technology (“FinTech”) companies that offer bank products and services and meet the OCC’s chartering requirements.

Accompanying the announcement, the OCC published a paper entitled “Exploring Special Purpose National Bank Charters for Fintech Companies”. The paper discusses the issues considered by the OCC in approving national bank charters and how some of those might apply to FinTech businesses, and poses a series of questions for public comment. Written comments are requested by January 15, 2017.

However, while encouraging, the announcement, and the OCC paper, left many issues unresolved.  The OCC did not provide a timeline for accepting or issuing the proposed special purpose national bank charters. In addition, while recognizing that FinTech charters will be different, the OCC did not clarify whether or how those differences would be reflected in the chartering process, standards, or subsequent supervision. The OCC simply stated that the standard chartering process would apply. The unresolved issues, and the questions posed in the accompanying paper, illustrate that it is unlikely that the OCC will actually charter a FinTech special purpose national bank soon.