Felix Shipkevich is the founder and principal of Shipkevich PLLC, a financial services law firm with offices in New York City, Miami, and London. He advises and defends financial institutions, fintech and digital asset companies, payments firms, and consumer finance businesses in the regulatory, transactional, and enforcement matters that shape their industries. His practice sits at the intersection of financial regulation and emerging technology, and he is equally at home counseling a client through a novel licensing question and defending one before a regulator. Over the course of his career he has represented and defended clients before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the National Futures Association (NFA), and the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as state attorneys general and state banking and financial regulators, in complex investigations, examinations, and enforcement matters in federal and state courts.

Mr. Shipkevich’s regulatory practice spans the commodities, futures, and derivatives markets, where he counsels futures commission merchants, retail foreign exchange dealers, introducing brokers, commodity pool operators, commodity trading advisors, swap dealers, swap execution facilities, and domestic and offshore funds on registration, compliance, and their dealings with the CFTC and the NFA. He guides clients through the full lifecycle of registration and compliance documentation and regularly engages with the CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight and Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight.

A recognized voice on digital assets, Mr. Shipkevich advises cryptocurrency, blockchain, and fintech companies on token offerings, money transmission and money services business licensing, and the overlapping jurisdiction of federal and state regulators, including the SEC, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), and state money transmitter authorities. He counsels payments companies and money services businesses on multistate licensing, federal compliance under the Bank Secrecy Act, and the structuring of new products and services.

In the consumer finance space, Mr. Shipkevich represents debt relief and debt settlement companies, lead generators, payment processors, and law firms on regulatory compliance, examinations, and enforcement under federal and state law, including matters before the CFPB, the FTC, state attorneys general, and state regulatory agencies. He regularly handles civil investigative demands, Telemarketing Sales Rule and Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) compliance, and the licensing and structural questions that recur across the debt relief industry. He is recognized as a solicitor by the Law Society of England and Wales and has advised clients across Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, and South America.

Before founding the firm, Mr. Shipkevich was Vice President and General Counsel of CMS Forex, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and retail foreign exchange dealer, where he led legal and compliance across offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, and St. Petersburg, and worked closely with the CFTC and the NFA through the Dodd-Frank rulemaking process. Earlier in his career he supervised professional liability litigation in the Financial Institutions Group at American International Group (AIG) and began in private practice as a litigator representing financial institutions in federal and state courts.

Mr. Shipkevich is a Special Professor of Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where he teaches The Business and Policies of Cryptocurrencies and has taught Corporate Finance Law. He is the author of three books on financial regulation and a frequent commentator on cryptocurrency, money transmission, and consumer financial services.