Financial & Fintech Advisory

The tension between innovation and regulation in financial services has never been higher. As the industry transforms, Orrick’s Financial & Fintech Advisory team combines a holistic understanding of business needs with a grasp of the emergent regulatory landscape to help our clients meet this moment of unprecedented change.

Uncommon Regulatory Insight

Fintechs and established financial services companies are harnessing new technologies to introduce innovative products, services, and delivery methods to consumers. At the same time, "traditional” tech giants are increasingly providing their end-users with access to the latest financial products and innovations. All of this in the shadow of federal and state regulators expanding the boundaries of their authority and jurisdiction in every corner of the financial services marketplace.

Our Financial & Fintech Advisory team of more than 80 lawyers is widely recognized for our depth and experience in helping businesses navigate these choppy waters. In addition to being named a 2022 ‘Fintech Practice of the Year’ by Law360, our team has been recognized as a leading firm by Chambers USA for every Consumer Finance category, Privacy & Data Security and ABS, CMBS and PACE securitizations.

Many of our lawyers provide this advice by leveraging deep company-side experience informed by significant government experience, including in senior appointed positions, giving us firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of the government’s most important regulatory bodies, such as:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Department of Justice
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Federal Reserve Board
Federal Trade Commission
U.S. Senate and House committees
Numerous state regulatory agencies

Clients Across the Financial Services Industry

We represent most large consumer banks in the country, more than 700 fintech participants and leading companies in every consumer lending vertical. Our clients also include regional and community banks, along with venture capital, private credit and private equity investors.

In addition to our substantive knowledge of government, enforcement and regulatory trends, clients turn to us for our familiarity with the regulatory culture and its increasingly rigorous expectations. We build multidisciplinary teams to advise clients as they progress through the financial services lifecycle, taking the time to understand their business models and goals, and working with them to anticipate potential obstacles and find creative ways to solve them.

Our expertise spans the entire financial services industry including mortgage lending, consumer lending, commercial lending, money transmission, payments, broker-dealer, auto lending, student lending, credit card, supply chain finance, PACE financing, leasing and beyond.

The breadth of our practice is matched only by our depth. Our team can seamlessly navigate the panoply of relevant federal laws relevant to the financial services industry, such as TILA, RESPA, ECOA FCRA, GLBA, UDAAP, BSA/AML, SAFE Act., E-SIGN, TCPA, and more. As a leading provider of legal services to the mortgage industry, our comprehensive approach is based on decades of experience providing regulatory compliance advice for all aspects of origination and servicing, navigating fair and responsible lending and servicing, assisting nonbank clients analyze state licensing requirements, performing preemption analyses for bank clients, and defending mortgage lenders and servicers in every stage of government investigation and enforcement as well as federal and state court proceedings.

That same expertise extends to all types of clients—from global financial institutions to start-ups—and to the full spectrum of financial services products, including marketplace lenders, money transmitters, payment processors, debt collectors, debt buyers, retail installment sellers, and the private equity and venture capital firms that own or invest in these companies.

Innovative Solutions for an Evolving Marketplace

Market participants and regulators are re-imagining the fundamental components of the traditional financial system, from loans and deposits to customer experience and the role of currency.

Innovation is part of who we are, too. Our approach goes beyond best-in-class legal advice to proprietary technology solutions and alternative delivery arrangements—such as Winnow and Approved—that empower our clients’ in-house teams to see around corners and efficiently meet licensing and compliance requirements.

Winnow is a comprehensive, interactive, and searchable database of more than 50,000 state law requirements through which financial services companies can generate legal inventories tailored by business type, license, and product (mortgage, auto, credit card, consumer, commercial loans, and deposits among others). It also includes laws related to the servicing of these products, and topics like marketing and advertising, debt collection, telemarketing, notary requirements, electronic signatures and documents, powers of attorney, and privacy and data security.

Approved is a licensing and regulatory examination solution that translates legal advice into licensing support services (such as helping clients obtain and maintain necessary licenses) as well as state examination support and management. We built a licensing regtech platform from the ground up to give compliance professionals confidence that they have an accurate and comprehensive view of their licensing obligation and technology solutions designed to directly address the unique challenges faced by fintechs and other financial services companies.