Financial Regulatory Advice & Response

Our team is a designed combination of career outside counsel and former senior leaders of some of the world’s largest banks. Through long experience, we understand our clients from the inside out, anticipate their needs, and tailor advice that can be operationalized by our clients and explained to their auditors and regulators. We build engagement teams designed to meet our clients’ needs – from high level senior engagement on unique regulatory issues to large project teams implementing large scale regulatory compliance projects.

Our counsel covers matters involving all of the major financial services regulators. This work includes matters involving the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  We also handle certain matters involving state banking and securities departments and attorneys general.

We regularly represent some of the largest U.S. banks, including four of the country’s five largest financial institutions. Our experience includes the full range of state and federal banking, wealth management, securities and commodities laws and regulations.  

At the federal level, we advise our clients on the permissibility of, and compliance requirements associated with, their financial product and service offerings and the prudential requirements that govern their internal operations and risk management frameworks. This includes advice regarding:

• the Bank Holding Company Act, the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, the National Bank Act, and related federal banking laws governing the operations of banks and bank/financial holding companies, including the implementing regulations of the FRB, FDIC, OCC, and CFPB and associated safety and soundness standards;
• the Securities Act of 1933, Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and associated implementing regulations of the SEC applicable to investment advisers and broker-dealers, including the rules of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority; and,
• the Commodities Exchange Act and associated implementing regulations of the CFTC, including the rules of the National Futures Association.

At the state law level, we regularly advise our clients on targeted compliance issues. Our work involves state financial services laws, including lending and securities licensing and business product requirements, as well as performing multi-state surveys across a broad range of financial services topics. We also consider the impact of federal law preemption of state laws and regulations. As appropriate, we engage with state banking and securities commissioners, including on the permissibility of new business initiatives and product offerings.

A core aspect of our practice involves assisting with our clients’ responses to supervisory findings and enforcement actions. We work with institutions to develop responsive action plans, narrative responses, and ongoing reporting to supervisors and applicable boards of directors.

Our experience extends to assisting non-U.S. financial organizations as well. Included in our team is a former U.S. General Counsel for one of the largest Japanese banks. We regularly assist non-U.S. banks on understanding and meeting the U.S. regulatory requirements that are specific to their operations and businesses. For instance, we have advised non-U.S. banking organizations on branching and representative office requirements at both the state and federal level and non-U.S. central counterparties on regulatory considerations associated with their on-boarding of U.S. based members. We have also advised large asset managers in structuring global advisory businesses and fund structures to comply with U.S. law requirements, including reliance on exemptions from federal and state licensing requirements for investment advisers and chaperoning arrangements for broker-dealer entities.

Our team has consistently ranked as a national leader, including national rankings by Chambers and Partners for the team and our co-heads Ed O’Keefe and Neil Bloomfield for the past four years. Ed has recently been ranked by a leading service as the number one banking lawyer in North Carolina.

Current Areas of Focus:

• Preemption – the Supreme Court’s decision in Cantero has opened areas of state law long believed to be preempted for potential application for our national bank clients. We are advising our clients on this shifting landscape and what state laws can still be preempted under the National Bank Act and other federal laws.
• State Law Compliance – with the pullback of federal regulation and enforcement by the current administration, state legislatures and regulators have become more aggressive in regulating the financial services industry. We have been advising clients for years on the build out of inventories of state laws and regulations to ensure their internal compliance programs meet these rising needs.
• Debanking/fair access – state legislation and a federal executive order has led to pressure on financial institutions to understand and defend current and historical decisions to decline or offboard clients falling into categories of interest to regulators. We have been advising clients in this space, both in terms of responding to regulatory and media inquiries and designing controls positioning firms to serve customers that may be the subject of these initiatives.
• Capital, liquidity, and operational resilience – our team has advised financial institutions on recovery and resolution planning, stress testing, and related regulatory requirements since their introduction under the Dodd-Frank Act. These areas gained renewed attention following the 2023 regional bank failures and are the subject of recent reform efforts. We are actively publishing insights on proposed rules and legislation affecting capital and liquidity standards for institutions of all sizes.  In addition, we have guided clients through supervisory expectations around operational resilience, including relevant regulations and guidance. As regulators increasingly focus on material financial risks and testing of operational readiness, these capabilities will remain central to regulatory strategy and compliance.
• Developing Issues – the financial services industry is constantly evolving. Today, firms face a world with changing government initiatives as well as rapidly developing technologies and products. From cryptocurrencies to digital platforms and artificial intelligence, we are fully engaged with our clients and other industry participants in understanding the operational and legal aspects of each development. Our team routinely publishes and speaks on financial industry trends and issues.

Representative Work

• Advising a Fortune 50 financial institution on its compliance with a consent order with certain U.S. regulatory authorities. Assisting lender and mortgage servicer in responding to inquiries from its regulator related to federal flood insurance requirements
• Reviewing advertising strategies and marketing materials for compliance with fair lending, UDAAP, and TILA/ Regulation Z requirements and other applicable consumer financial laws
• Providing legal and regulatory counsel on innovation and financial inclusion initiatives, including related to underwriting and credit decisioning models, consumer credit terms, capital markets arrangements, and use of electronic or digital platforms
• Advising on marketplace lending arrangements, including state usury and licensing requirements (and applicability of federal preemption based on valid-when-made and true lender analysis), on- going compliance with consumer financial laws and related due diligence, and receivables management and enforceability strategies
• Advising significant financial institution on the restructuring of its conduct management and employee relations programs
• Counseling mortgage brokers and mortgage lenders on compliance with consumer mortgage laws, including RESPA, TILA, HMDA, and fair lending laws, and reviewing loan portfolios to identify potential collection issues and litigation risks
• Advising on brokered-deposit requirements and related considerations in connection with third party prepaid card, deposit account, and sweep account programs
• Advising on ongoing and scenario driven litigation loss analysis for CCAR
• Regularly conducting compliance reviews on the applicability of key regulations, including Regulation B, Regulation C, and Regulation Z, to existing and proposed products and processes, including applicability of consumer finance regulations to institutional and wholesale lending
• Advising financial institution on its Recovery and Resolution Planning requirements, including drafting governance and bankruptcy playbooks, consulting on training for their boards of director, reviewing the adequacy of legal analysis on potential creditor challenges, and reviewing draft bankruptcy filings
• Advised on drafting living wills and developing necessary governance
• Advising on the structure and governance of risk data aggregation
• Advising on compliance with Regulation W and Regulation O
• Advising on digitalization and the rise of artificial intelligence

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The Moore & Van Allen White Collar Defense, Investigations, and Regulatory Advice Blog provides in-depth analysis and up-to-date information to companies and individuals to help navigate the rapidly evolving and challenging areas of regulatory and criminal enforcement, as domestic and international government authorities increasingly subject companies to the complexities of overlapping investigations and parallel proceedings.