Nonbank Financial

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently laid out its priorities for 2019 in its annual report, which include measures designed to reduce regulatory burdens while continuing to promote safety and soundness in the banking sector. It also indicates that 2018 saw the fewest OCC-issued supervisory notices in 12 years.

Many of the OCC’s recent actions, and those it is planning to take in the coming months, involve implementing provisions of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

Find out more details about the report.

Research conducted by Federal Financial Analytics, Inc. indicates that fintechs pose greater financial stability risk to the economy than previously thought, due in large part to their lack of regulatory oversight.

The report details findings indicating that fintechs pose systemic risk stemming from their general lack of liquidity, lack of regulatory oversight compared with banks and credit unions, their dominance in certain areas of the marketplace and the vast amount of personally identifiable information (PII) they store.

Get an in-depth look at the reasoning provided in the report.

An online student loan provider’s recent decision to withdraw its bid to become a chartered industrial loan company (ILC) represents the third instance of such a retraction by a fintech in a little more than a year.

Nelnet Inc., an online student loan servicer, released a statement indicating that the company may consider reapplying for an ILC charter with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions in the future.

Find out why the Independent Community Bankers of America stands opposed to such charters.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is being sued over its recent decision to begin accepting non-bank charter applications from fintech companies.

The lawsuit is the second brought by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) regarding the OCC’s stance on fintech charters and coincides with the renewal of a similar legal challenge previously brought by a coalition of state bank regulators.

Find out what arguments are being put forth in the case and what the OCC said in its rebuttal.

Determining that its market activities did not pose significant systemic economic risk, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) announced that Zions Bank will not be treated as a designated nonbank financial company upon completion of its merger with Zions Bancorporation.

In its final decision, FSOC noted arguments Zions stressed in a written submission advocating for the regulators not to subject the company to enhanced regulatory scrutiny reserved for large nonbank financial institutions, and argued that any two entities could structure a merger that subverted Section 117 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Find out more details about the merger and the council’s decision.

As nonbank fintech apps have grown in circulation, so have their users’ concerns about their privacy, according to a survey by The Clearing House.

Two-thirds of consumers who use such apps indicated that they are “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” about data privacy, researchers found. They also found that few consumers are inclined to do anything about their concerns.

Read on to get more details about the survey findings.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced that it will begin accepting special charter applications from non-depository financial services providers.

The announcement came in tandem with a Treasury Department report identifying regulatory improvements that could provide better oversight of support nonbank financial institutions, addressing a major point of contention for the banking industry.

Find out more about the agency’s announcement and the industry’s reaction.

Numerous financial trade organizations and members of Congress have advocated for federal regulators to hold credit reporting bureaus accountable for the security of vast amounts of personal information in their possession.

Peggy Twohig of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Maneesha Mithal of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said their agencies want to focus more attention on credit reporting agencies while testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, but noted that the bureau could not enforce against data breaches and the FTC could not hand out civil penalties to violators.

Find out what both agency officials had to say about the matter of holding credit reporting agencies accountable when breaches occur.

The House recently passed a pair of bipartisan measures tweaking Federal Reserve stress tests and the process of determining which financial institutions should undergo the most rigorous testing.

H.R. 4061, otherwise known as the “Financial Stability Oversight Council Improvement Act,” and H.R. 4293, also known as the “Stress Test Improvement Act of 2017,” seek to address concerns expressed on both sides of the political aisle.

Find out more about more about what the two bills could mean for nonbank financial companies supervised by the Fed.

Technology’s imprint on the financial industry will only continue to grow in magnitude, bringing with it a greater need to focus on compliance guidelines crafted to account for risks that did not exist in decades past.

Dodd Frank Update was in attendance for the “Digital Regulator Panel” at the Consumer Bankers Association’s 2018 Annual Convention, which consisted of Kelvin Chen of the Federal Reserve, Beth Knickerbocker of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Dan Quan of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Find out what insight the regulators were able to share.