Summary
Solo, a consumer reporting agency, has demonstrated a data sharing model — in coordination with the Treasury Department, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — that allows banks and fintechs to reuse customer verification work that their partners have performed using a specific compliance standard. The pilot program launched Wednesday aims to soothe a particular headache in bank-fintech partnerships: repeated customer verification.
Key Facts
- Pilot program launched Wednesday to reduce repeated customer verification
- Solo demonstrated data sharing model in coordination with Treasury, OCC, FDIC
- Allows banks and fintechs to reuse customer verification work performed by partners
- Reduces risk of banks facing enforcement actions over customer vetting by fintech partners
- Solo created know-your-customer and know-your-business certificates for institutions to complete
- Solo audits institution's process and verifies what it attests
- Issues reusable certificate for partner institutions in the network
- "We map their work against your policy, filter out anything that doesn't qualify, independently audit" — CEO Georgina Merhom
- Backing from former CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney (adviser since October 2025)
- Solo last year debuted a service (modeled on Zelle) for banks to share customer data, avoiding third-party aggregators like Plaid
Why It Matters
Solo's reusable customer-vetting tool addresses a core inefficiency in bank-fintech partnerships: the repeated verification of the same customers across institutions. The model — with banks submitting their customer information program policies and receiving network-audited records of equivalent verification performed elsewhere — reduces duplication and the risk of enforcement actions over lax vetting. The coordination with Treasury, OCC and FDIC signals regulatory support for standardizing KYC across the ecosystem. This parallels the FDIC's initiative to create a certification body for fintech partners, reflecting a broader regulatory push toward standardized, reusable compliance work. For the fintech sector, Solo's approach could reduce onboarding friction and compliance costs while strengthening the audit trail — potentially reshaping how KYC is shared across banks and fintechs.