Financial Institutions

Shipkevich PLLC advises the companies that operate at the boundary between banks and the rest of the financial system — fintechs, money services businesses, payment companies, and digital asset firms — on the bank-regulatory questions their businesses raise. We counsel clients on how bank regulation affects what they do, how to structure and manage their relationships with chartered institutions, and how to meet the compliance expectations that reach them through those relationships.

Our clients approach banking from the outside in: a payments company relying on a sponsor bank, a fintech offering deposit or card products through a banking-as-a-service program, a money services business maintaining the banking relationships its operations depend on. We help them understand which federal and state bank regulators — the OCC, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, and state authorities such as the New York Department of Financial Services — shape those relationships and what those regulators expect.

Bank partnerships and program structuring. We structure sponsor-bank and banking-as-a-service arrangements from the non-bank side, allocating regulatory responsibility and meeting the third-party risk-management expectations regulators now apply to these programs.

Bank-regulatory issues for nonbanks. We advise on how bank rules reach fintechs and MSBs through their partnerships, on product permissibility questions, and on where federal and state requirements interact.

Program-level BSA/AML and consumer compliance. We build the anti-money laundering and consumer-compliance programs that partner banks increasingly require of their fintech partners.

Supervisory and enforcement spillover. We help clients respond when a partner bank’s regulator turns its attention to the program the client operates.

Representative Experience

Advise non-bank lenders, loan brokers, lead-generation platforms, and consumer-finance companies on state licensing, including multi-state loan-brokering surveys, direct-mail loan-offer compliance, and California Finance Lenders licensing.
Represent a consumer lender in a California DFPI investigation, in CFPB complaint-portal matters, and in class actions in Illinois and California.
Issued an opinion of counsel to a bank on the bank-exemption analysis for a debt-settlement program it supports.
Represented a government-payments company and a bill-payment technology company in state regulator inquiries regarding bank-sponsored payment flows.
Advised a retail FX group on its broker-dealer’s SEC and FINRA examinations and on overseas banking relationships, including a Cyprus bank onboarding.
Reviewed a broker engagement agreement with a major financial services firm in connection with a client’s prospective sale, and a purchase-of-receivables agreement between a finance company and a law firm.

Financial Institutions

Representative Experience

Shipkevich PLLC

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