Fintech

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Thursday, September 20, 2018
11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. EDT

On July 31, 2018, after a review period following its initial proposal, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced it would begin accepting applications for its special purpose national bank charter for financial technology (fintech) companies. While the New York State Department of Financial Services has (again) sued the OCC claiming that it lacks the legal authority to issue this type of charter, companies are actively exploring the OCC fintech charter as well as other bank charter alternatives, such as industrial loan companies (ILCs), to facilitate their nationwide operation. Because many of these companies want to avoid owning a “bank” and being regulated as a bank holding company, there is a particular interest in those depository institutions excluded from the Bank Holding Company Act’s definition of “bank.”

Please join Mayer Brown partners Tom Delaney, Jeff Taft and Don Waack as they answer:

  • What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of an OCC fintech charter?
  • What are the alternative banking charters, such as ILCs, credit card banks and full-service insured depository institutions?
  • What is a “bank holding company”? (And why you may want to avoid this status.)

For more information, or to register for this complimentary session, please visit the event website.

Fintech companies continue the global trend of companies choosing to remain private longer and raising large amounts of capital through private channels.  A recent CB Insights report covered the financing trends of fintech companies for the first half of 2018.  As of the date of the report, there were 29 fintech unicorns valued at $84.4 billion globally.  The second quarter of 2018 valued five fintech companies at unicorn status (over $1 billion).  Three of these new unicorns are based in the United States.

U.S. fintech companies raised $3.2 billion in new capital over 146 deals in the second quarter of 2018, bringing the total number of deals for the first half of the year to 303, raising approximately $5.3 billion.  Compared to Q2 2017, last quarter’s total capital raised increased over 52%.  Not surprisingly, later-stage capital raises made up over 83% of deals in the second quarter, raising approximately $2.7 billion over 74 deals.

There was only one IPO exit by a fintech unicorn in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2018, which raised $874 million.  Globally, M&A exits accounted for approximately 85% of fintech company exits, with 39 M&A transactions, while there were only seven fintech IPOs completed in the first half of 2018.

For more information, read CB Insights’ Global Fintech Report Q2 2018.