LATEST ISSUE · NO. 004The charter rush is being covered as fintech news. It is a bank story. Every approval is a deposit line that will quietly leave someone’s balance sheet, and no regulator will ever write it up.
NO. 003The Fed just filed a Prompt Corrective Action directive against a small Kansas bank — a capital action, not a compliance one. It is the category that actually predicts a bank failing, and almost nobody in fintech has learned to read it.
NO. 002An OCC order against a small bank that grew six-fold on cross-border fintech — and why the restriction it leaves out matters more than the findings it includes.
NO. 001Why the people with the most to lose when a sponsor bank gets into trouble are almost always the last to find out — and the public signals that say otherwise.
Every Thursday, Counterparty reads the filings, court records, and regulator actions you do not have time for — and sends one clear issue on which sponsor banks are weakening, and who depends on them.
Get the free weekly issueMost fintech apps “rent” their banking from a small, federally insured bank working quietly in the background — often with a connector company sitting in between. The arrangement is invisible, and it works fine, until it doesn’t.
A polished neobank, card, or business-finance tool. A technology company — not a chartered bank.
Middleware that links the app to the bank. When Synapse failed in 2024, real people had funds frozen — and lost.
A small, federally insured bank holding the deposits. One bank can quietly sit beneath dozens of apps at once.
The warning signs are scattered across regulatory sites, court records, financial filings, licensing databases, and news. Counterparty watches them continuously and reads them as one picture.
Reads the fine print on fintech sites and filings to map which app relies on which bank — and which connector sits between.
Tracks how many apps sit on each bank and connector, so it knows where a single failure would ripple outward.
Watches quarterly bank filings for shrinking deposits, losses, and thin safety margins.
When a regulator formally disciplines a bank, that is a strong signal — and Counterparty catches it.
Legal trouble naming one of these banks or the apps that depend on them.
When an app applies for its own banking license, it is signaling it wants to leave its current bank — visible in advance.
Sudden moves to hire compliance, risk, and BSA/AML staff — or quiet executive departures — often reveal a bank responding to a silent, non-public regulator order before any action becomes visible.
Interest rates, the overall health of this group of banks, and the tone of news coverage — the macro backdrop against which every individual signal is read.
A growing library of additional proprietary signals we develop and add continuously — the edge that keeps Counterparty ahead of the headlines.
Financial warning signs, regulatory actions, lawsuits, and negative news combine into one picture of distress.
A bank with one small app behind it is a very different story from one quietly supporting twenty — the blast radius if something breaks.
Every rating comes with a short, plain-English reason — “deposits down sharply, unprofitable, and named in six lawsuits” — not just a number. And because we keep watching, we can tell a bank that is simply small from one that is actively getting worse. That direction of travel is often the most useful part of all.
Backing fintech companies, who need to know whether a startup they are funding is sitting on a shaky bank.
Guiding fintechs and wanting an independent, candid read on counterparty risk.
Pricing or underwriting this kind of exposure with better, earlier information.
Choosing a banking partner — or keeping watch on the one they already rely on.
That independence is the point. We can be candid precisely because we don’t work for the companies we rate. The free newsletter shares the most interesting findings publicly — a public service, and the front door to the deeper intelligence behind it.
One email a week — the week’s read on the sponsor-bank layer, in plain English. Join investors, risk teams, and fintech operators getting Counterparty’s early warnings before the headlines.