Special Alert: CSBS Sues OCC Over Fintech National Bank Charter

Fintech Financial Institutions OCC CSBS Fintech Charter

On April 26, 2017, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) initiated a lawsuit against the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the OCC’s statutory authority to create a special purpose national bank (SPNB) charter for financial technology (fintech) companies. 

Prior to this lawsuit, CSBS had publicly opposed the fintech SPNB charter on numerous occasions, asserting last month that the OCC has acted beyond the legal limits of its authority and that providing SPNB charters to fintech companies “exposes taxpayers to the risk of inevitable FinTech failures.” 

In the press release announcing the lawsuit, CSBS President John Ryan referred to the OCC’s action as “an unprecedented, unlawful expansion of the chartering authority given to it by Congress for national banks,” and stated that “if Congress had intended it to be used for another purpose, it would have explicitly authorized the OCC to do so.” 

Citing violations of the National Bank Act (NBA), Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and the U.S. Constitution, CSBS seeks declaratory and injunctive relief that would declare the fintech SPNB charter to be unlawful and prohibit the OCC from taking further steps toward creating or issuing an SPNB fintech charter, without express Congressional authority.

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If you have questions about the charter or other related issues, visit our Financial Institutions Regulation, Supervision & Technology (FIRST) and FinTech practice pages for more information, or contact a Buckley Sandler attorney with whom you have worked in the past.