Standard FDIC for fintech: the independent committee certifies banking partners

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is taking a step that could reshape how U.S. banks choose and oversee their technology partners. According to Bloomberg Law, the agency is working with key industry players to create an independent committee tasked with certifying fintech providers linked to banks. In practice, this is the first real concrete initiative to define FDIC standards for fintech shared at the industry level, following months of regulatory pressure after a collapse that shook confidence in the system of intermediary deposits.

The core of the proposal is simple yet ambitious: to create an external body that evaluates a fintech provider's risk information once, updates it periodically, and makes it reusable by multiple banks simultaneously. A draft term sheet obtained by Bloomberg Law describes the goal as the standardization and certification of common third-party risk management (TPRM) information, preventing each bank from having to conduct the same checks from scratch on the same technology partner. Each institution would still be responsible for its own contractual decisions, integration, monitoring, and specific oversight.

The key point is the voluntary nature of the system: no bank will be required to participate, but those that do will benefit from a recognized and more efficient banking fintech certification compared to the repeated individual checks by each institution. The FDIC itself will provide part of the initial funding to launch the body, signaling that the agency wants to give concrete momentum to the project and not leave it just on paper.

For banks, the immediate advantage concerns the costs and time of due diligence: being able to rely on already certified independent evaluations means less duplication and faster processes to activate new fintech partnerships. The new organization aims to provide risk management guidelines for third-party providers, reliable assessments of the services offered to banks, and, above all, basic guarantees for regulators regarding the financial companies operating behind the scenes of digital banking services.

Here lies the true meaning of the initiative: it is not just an operational simplification for institutions but an attempt to rebuild regulatory trust in a previously opaque link in the chain. The proposed FDIC risk management standards could become a de facto reference for the entire banking-as-a-service ecosystem, even though they remain voluntary and thus lack immediate binding force.

The initiative does not arise in a vacuum. After the collapse of the fintech Synapse in 2024, the FDIC publicly committed to strengthening standards on deposits received through third-party providers, an episode that exposed gaps in the oversight of bank-fintech partnerships. The collapse left thousands of end-users without immediate access to their funds, precisely due to fragmentation and opacity in managing relationships between banks and technology intermediaries.

This project is being collaborated on by some of the most representative organizations in the U.S. banking and fintech sector: the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, the Bank Policy Institute, the Financial Technology Association, the American Fintech Council, and the Coalition for Financial Ecosystem Standards. Such a broad convergence between traditional banking associations and fintech representatives signals that the issue of third-party risk certification is perceived as urgent by both sides of the industry, not just by the regulator.

The FDIC is proceeding at an unusually rapid pace for a regulatory agency: definitive guidelines are expected in the coming weeks, according to Bloomberg Law. This is not an isolated case of relying on independent bodies to define technical standards: under the Biden administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had turned to external organizations for technical guidelines on open banking, creating a precedent that the FDIC now seems to want to replicate in a different but equally delicate context.

The real test will come when the first certifications are operational: only then will it be possible to measure how many banks truly choose to adhere to a system designed to be efficient precisely because it is voluntary, and how much this shared standard can prevent new cases like that of Synapse.