Navigating Political Influence in Financial Regulation

Welcome back to Bank Nerd Corner, featuring yours truly and—plot twist—not Kiah Haslett. Today we’re flying without our usual co-pilot, but in her place we’ve got Jason Henrichs: CEO of Alloy Labs, Breaking Banks host, and longtime Fintech Takes favorite, first time BNC co-host.

Jason knows he can’t out-nerd Kiah (who among us can?), so instead we’re flying full black-box mode: no segments, just rants. 

First rant: VCs have no business chasing board seats if they’re not ready to govern! 

We still don’t know what the Synapse board discussed, if anything, as customers lost access to their funds. Then there’s Frank, the fintech that sold a fantasy to JPMorgan. The founder’s taking the heat (rightfully so), but not a word from the investors who stood to benefit most. Shouldn’t they share the blame? How do we build governance into the capital stack…before the next meltdown makes it everyone’s problem?

Second rant: Financial infrastructure isn’t a policy tool, so stop treating it like one! 

Credit bureaus are built to assess risk, not engineer outcomes. But during the pandemic, we paused student loan delinquencies, wiped medical debt, and blocked BNPL data to improve scores, which sounds (and is!) very compassionate…but also encouraged lenders to stop trusting the data. It gets worse! The SSA quietly added living immigrants to the Death Master File used to prevent fraud, flagging them as “dead” and freezing them out of the financial system. You want to change immigration law, fine, but weaponizing infrastructure is sabotage! So, how do we restore trust in the rails before we lose it all?

Third rant: Everyone cheered deregulation, but no one told the examiners! 

Banks are facing some of the harshest exams in years, and it’s because the regulators with institutional knowledge are gone. What's left are thinly staffed teams defaulting to “no” because they don’t understand “yes.” And fintechs that pursued charters expecting clarity? They’re running into delays, confusion, and examiners who just don’t understand the model. But for most, the charter hasn’t reduced risk…it’s just introduced new kinds. 

Fourth and final rant: This isn’t deregulation; it’s deregulation theater! 

The CFPB says it won’t enforce parts of the payday lending rule…but doesn’t repeal it. FHFA reverses housing initiatives by tweet. Executive orders bypass public comment with a shrug: “because I said so.” The result is total ambiguity (good actors stay quiet; bad actors run wild). Uncertainty is the new policy…and it’s expensive! Not just for banks and fintechs, but for the trust that holds the whole system together.  

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Breaking Banks podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-banks/id641357669

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