Can You Standardize Bank-Fintech Risk?

Welcome back to Fintech Takes. I'm Alex Johnson, joined by two of my favorite Jasons (Jason Mikula of Fintech Business Weekly and Jason Henrichs of Alloy Labs) to go deep on the FDIC's very early effort to create standards for third-party risk management (particularly for bank-fintech partnerships).

Banking didn't get here by accident. FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry ran the market for decades. Long contracts locked banks into these three providers and left little room for anyone else, which set the stage for fintech's rise.

Then, we explore what happened when the pendulum swung too far in the other direction.

From there, we consider whether certification can actually reduce risk. Henrichs points to SOC 2 as a cautionary tale, while Mikula questions whether meaningful standards can avoid putting very different banks, partners, and business models into a straitjacket.

Tune in for a conversation on why there may be no magic top-down solution to bank-fintech risk. The bottom-up version: a dedicated cross-agency examiner group with strong expertise, and narrower, more specific rules (like the reconciliation requirement the FDIC floated and then dropped).

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Follow Jason Mikula:

Newsletter: https://fintechbusinessweekly.substack.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmikula/

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Follow Jason Henrichs:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhenrichs/

Twitter: https://x.com/jasonhenrichs