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 will widen the circumstances below which banks and fintech corporations can share confidential supervisory data (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 flawed 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 threat reasonably than lowering it.
What the AFC is asking for
The council is urgent each companies on three associated fronts. First, it needs 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 enable FDIC-examined service suppliers to disclose details about their very own supervisory standing to potential financial institution companions, enabling knowledgeable threat 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, masking a variety of company occasions the place supervisory historical past is immediately materials to decision-making.
Third, the AFC advocates for a structured route by which qualifying entities, together with commerce associations and impartial analysis organisations, may obtain institution-specific CSI solely to conduct aggregated evaluation. The ensuing aggregated findings could be publishable, supporting regulatory analysis and coverage advocacy with out exposing particular person establishment knowledge.
On compliance safeguards, the AFC argues that defending delicate supervisory knowledge doesn’t require recreating the prior-approval burdens current in earlier frameworks. It recommends permitting confidentiality provisions to be embedded in current business agreements reasonably than creating new standalone approval processes, and opposes inflexible necessities akin to home incorporation mandates, granular personnel entry logs or transaction-level disclosures.
Phil Goldfeder, chief government of the AFC, mentioned a contemporary regulatory framework ought to enable establishments to trade vital supervisory context on the earliest phases of collaboration, backed by rigorous compliance safeguards. Ian Moloney, the AFC’s chief coverage officer, mentioned 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 phase, the place regulators discovered that banks had inadequate visibility into their fintech companions’ threat profiles earlier than and through the relationship.
The CSI reform proposed right here works the opposite facet of that drawback: not by including oversight after a partnership is shaped, however by enhancing the data accessible to either side earlier than they commit. For fintech corporations that maintain their very own examination historical past from a prudential regulator, the flexibility to disclose that file to potential financial institution companions may 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; ultimate guidelines, if adopted, would doubtless have an effect on the vast majority of bank-fintech partnership frameworks working below OCC and FDIC charters.
AI degree 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
