The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which held office hours through its Office of Innovation in New York last week, might be in over its head.
The office received a large volume of meeting requests, but could conduct meetings with only a fraction of those applicants.
“It seemed that the OCC was surprised with the sheer amount of people that requested to meet with them,” Pam Perdue, Executive VP, of regtech firm Continuity, told Bank Innovation. “They got hundreds of requests and were only able to meet with one third of them.”
Perdue’s firm Continuity was one the applicants that met with the OCC. Each meeting ran for an hour and took place in the OCC’s New York District office located on Madison Avenue in New York City.
The OCC said back in June that its Office of Innovation would hold hours for national banks, federal savings associations, and fintech companies to discuss and enable positive developments in the financial innovation space. One of the most important of those developments is the possibility that the OCC will grant special national banking charters to fintech companies.
Whether online personal finance company SoFi, which applied for a Utah state banking charter as well as a Deposit Insurance with FDIC back in June, was one of the applicants that met with the office, Perdue declined to comment on. Perdue’s firm is providing its compliance consulting services to SoFi.
But the question remains, as helpful as the OCC intends to be with enabling innovation in the fintech space, are they practically up for the challenge?
The fact that they could only accommodate a fraction of those applicants suggests some doubt.
The OCC established its Office of Innovation back in Oct. 2016. Prior to New York, the OCC held office hours in San Francisco in May.