United States: Finance and Banking

The FDIC has introduced a streamlined two-phase approach to deposit insurance applications, promising contingent authorization within 120 days and final approval within 12 months. While this accelerated timeline signals regulatory openness to new bank charters, including innovative fintech models, recent OCC denials reveal that speed comes with heightened expectations for application completeness, management quality, and operational readiness from day one.

The New York Department of Financial Services has imposed a $250,000 penalty on a licensed money transmitter following a 2022 ransomware attack that exposed critical gaps in the company's cybersecurity framework. The enforcement action highlights specific deficiencies in risk assessment protocols, cybersecurity program design, and software update policies that allegedly violated New York's Cybersecurity Regulation. This settlement underscores the regulatory expectation that financial institutions maintain r

FERC has approved a settlement penalizing cryptocurrency mining company Digi Power X Inc. for violating NYISO tariff interconnection rules by connecting its mining operations to a co-generation facility without proper authorization. The case highlights FERC's increasing enforcement focus on ensuring large load customers, particularly crypto miners and data centers, strictly comply with grid reliability requirements and market rules.