Bruce Wallace, chief digital officer of Silicon Valley Bank, was interviewed by the WSJ and asked to expand on his concerns around how start-ups deal with often complex and sometimes confusing and totally outdated regulation.
–Which regulatory agencies govern them? In addition to the Federal Reserve, you have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, etc., along with the 50 state regulators. –Secondly, within each of the regulatory agencies there are a multitude of regs and rules, operating circulars, and policies that govern various aspects of financial services. –Third, many of these regs and rules were pre-mobile, pre-eCommerce, pre-Internet. –Fourth, many startups have the challenge of defining a complex regulatory compliance model with a very small or thin team. Banks have hundreds, sometimes thousands, of employees committed to compliance functions.