We previously posted on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at enhancing recordkeeping for bank deposits received from fintech and other third-party, non-bank companies. Today, the proposed rule was published in the Federal Register and the FDIC is accepting public comments until December 2, 2024.

Guest Contributors: Jonah Crane and Adam Shapiro of Klaros Group

This is the second of three articles focused on a key question: as bank-fintech partnerships continue to play a vital role in driving financial services, how does the industry make this system safer and better?

In this second article,[i] we focus on encouraging the industry and regulators to adopt the right lessons from Synapse Financial Technologies’ (Synapse) bankruptcy by drawing from the root causes of its failure. We offer some best practices and discuss the potential role of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) recently proposed recordkeeping rule (Records NPR) — including areas of potential improvement — and conclude by noting how enhanced account ledgering by banks helps address one root cause of the Synapse failure: faulty account ledgering performed only by a third party.

This is the first of three articles focused on a key question: as bank-fintech partnerships continue to play a vital role in driving financial services, how does the industry make this system safer and better?

Fintechs and their partner banks are on edge. Regulators are concerned. But as counselors to a wide range of banks and nonbanks, we are confident that the bank-fintech partnership model is not broken. We have seen these partnerships work well — not just for clients, but for consumers and other end-users — with rigorous, risk-based controls that satisfy both the regulators and the public.