Compliance of the Day

Consortium Stablecoin Issuers: How U.S. Regulators Are Enabling Joint Bank Models As the U.S. regulatory framework for payment stablecoins continues to take shape, one important structural model is emerging: the bank consortium . Rather than launching a stablecoin independently, multiple financial institutions may form a joint vehicle to share the high costs of technology, reserve management, and compliance infrastructure. Recent proposals from the FDIC , NCUA , and OCC indicate that regulators are actively contemplating these consortium structures as a viable pathway for stablecoin issuance under the GENIUS Act of 2025 . The FDIC’s Streamlined Consortium Application Under the FDIC’s proposed 12 CFR Part 303 , banks participating in a stablecoin consortium may submit a single letter application on behalf of all participating FDIC-supervised institutions rather than filing separate submissions for each bank. To qualify for this streamlined filing, the app...

OCC Proposed Rules Under the GENIUS Act On March 2, 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued proposed rules under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the GENIUS Act ). The proposal is intended to establish a more comprehensive federal framework for the issuance of payment stablecoins and related digital asset activities. Scope and Structure of the Proposed Framework The OCC proposal applies to a defined set of entities under its jurisdiction and is designed to establish a more unified federal framework for stablecoin issuance and related activities. Covered Entities: The proposal applies to national banks and federal savings associations (and their subsidiaries), federal branches of foreign banks , nonbank federal qualified payment stablecoin issuers (FQPSIs) , and certain state-qualified issuers that exceed the $10 billion issuance threshold ...

FDIC vs. NCUA Payment Stablecoin Frameworks The Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the GENIUS Act ), enacted on July 18, 2025 , created the first federal framework for “payment stablecoins” . While the Act is now law, its full implementation still depends on final agency rulemaking. As of March 2026 , the FDIC and NCUA have issued diverging proposals on how financial institutions would apply to issue these assets. Comparative Analysis of Proposed Issuer Requirements Feature FDIC Proposal (Banks ) NCUA Proposal (Credit Unions) Primary Applicant The Parent IDI (Bank) Joint filing by Subsidiary and Parent(s) Application Format Narrative letter application Structured Manual with specific forms ...

FFIEC 002: Identified Losses and No ACL at FBO Branches U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banking organizations (FBOs) may elect not to maintain an Allowance for Credit Losses (ACL) at the branch level, but that election does not remove the need to identify credit losses and reflect them appropriately in regulatory reporting. For FFIEC 002 purposes, the key concept is that loans and similar assets must be reported net of identified losses, using either charge-offs or specific reserves that function like charge-offs for supervisory and reporting purposes. Regulatory guidance and reporting framework. The Federal Reserve is the primary federal supervisor for U.S. branches and agencies of FBOs and is the recipient of the FFIEC 002 report. The FFIEC 002 instructions and related Federal Reserve supervisory expectations require branches to maintain sound credit risk management and to report assets in a manner that reflects identified losses. Even when a branch does not ...