The American Fintech Council (AFC) has filed remark letters with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) backing proposed rule adjustments that might widen the circumstances underneath which banks and fintech firms can share confidential supervisory info (CSI). The letters reply to Notices of Proposed Rulemaking from each companies and construct on earlier AFC advocacy submitted collectively with the Independent Bank for Cooperatives Alliance to the OCC, FDIC and Federal Reserve in January 2026.
At its core, the AFC’s place is that the present CSI framework creates friction at precisely the incorrect second in a bank-fintech relationship: earlier than a proper partnership is established. Under present guidelines, establishments inspecting potential companions, senior hires or acquisition targets face constraints that restrict what supervisory context may be shared and with whom. The AFC argues that this successfully forces events right into a roundabout information-exchange course of it describes as “playing a game of telephone,” growing due diligence danger slightly than decreasing it.
What the AFC is asking for
The council is urgent each companies on three associated fronts. First, it desires the business-purpose disclosure authority that already permits some CSI sharing to be prolonged throughout the complete life cycle of third-party relationships, together with throughout preliminary pre-contractual due diligence. This would permit FDIC-examined service suppliers to disclose details about their very own supervisory standing to potential financial institution companions, enabling knowledgeable danger assessments earlier than any contract is signed.
Second, in its OCC submission, the AFC particularly requires CSI sharing to be permitted throughout merger and acquisition evaluations and throughout pre-engagement assessments of senior management candidates, protecting a spread of company occasions the place supervisory historical past is instantly materials to decision-making.
Third, the AFC advocates for a structured route by way of which qualifying entities, together with commerce associations and impartial analysis organisations, might obtain institution-specific CSI solely to conduct aggregated evaluation. The ensuing aggregated findings can be publishable, supporting regulatory analysis and coverage advocacy with out exposing particular person establishment information.
On compliance safeguards, the AFC argues that defending delicate supervisory information doesn’t require recreating the prior-approval burdens current in earlier frameworks. It recommends permitting confidentiality provisions to be embedded in present business agreements slightly than creating new standalone approval processes, and opposes inflexible necessities similar to home incorporation mandates, granular personnel entry logs or transaction-level disclosures.
Phil Goldfeder, chief government of the AFC, stated a contemporary regulatory framework ought to permit establishments to trade crucial supervisory context on the earliest phases of collaboration, backed by rigorous compliance safeguards. Ian Moloney, the AFC’s chief coverage officer, stated modernising the framework would enhance effectivity and efficacy within the examination course of for all events.
Regulatory context
The proposed OCC and FDIC rulemakings sit inside a broader effort by US prudential regulators to replace the authorized infrastructure round bank-fintech partnerships. That effort has gathered tempo following a number of high-profile partnership failures within the banking-as-a-service section, the place regulators discovered that banks had inadequate visibility into their fintech companions’ danger profiles earlier than and in the course of the relationship.
The CSI reform proposed right here works the opposite facet of that downside: not by including oversight after a partnership is shaped, however by bettering the data accessible to either side earlier than they commit. For fintech firms that maintain their very own examination historical past from a prudential regulator, the power to disclose that report to potential financial institution companions might turn out to be a significant differentiator in a market the place banks are more and more cautious about onboarding new expertise relationships with no full compliance image. The remark interval closes on the related regulatory deadlines; closing guidelines, if adopted, would seemingly have an effect on nearly all of bank-fintech partnership frameworks working underneath OCC and FDIC charters.
AI stage 1 of 5: written by Darlyn Ho; AI helped with tone, construction or wording; edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean
