Alison M. Hashmall

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Ms. Hashmall is an associate in Davis Polk's Financial Institutions Group. [Full Bio]

In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, de novo bank charters averaged more than 100 per year.[1] This robust flow of new bank charters continued a trend since the 1960s and before.[2] It partially offset a decline in the number of banks in the United…
Continue Reading FDIC Pledges to Jump Start the De Novo Bank Approval Process

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has granted conditional approval to digital-banking startup Varo Bank (previously Varo Money) of its application to form a de novo national bank.  Varo Bank, N.A. would become the first mobile-only national bank in United States. This is an interesting…
Continue Reading OCC Grants Conditional National Bank Charter to a Mobile-Only Bank

Davis Polk has submitted a comment letter on the Federal Reserve’s proposed supervisory guidance on board governance (which we summarized in a previous blog post).  Consistent with our previous blog posts on the proposed board guidance and separate management guidance  issued by the Federal Reserve for large financial institutions,…
Continue Reading Davis Polk Comments on Federal Reserve’s Proposed Guidance on Board Governance

In his recent speech that we have covered in a series of blog posts, Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles announced that he would like the Federal Reserve to achieve “meaningful simplification of our framework of loss absorbency requirements,” referring to both the Federal Reserve’s capital and…
Continue Reading Federal Reserve May Simplify the TLAC Rule

The Trump Treasury Department’s vision for how the FSOC should fulfill its mission is emerging.[1]  Ironically, this new, and we think better vision, may be closer to how the Obama Treasury Department originally conceived the FSOC’s role.  In essence, we read the implicit Treasury viewpoint to be that the over-focus…
Continue Reading Treasury’s Recommendation for FSOC: No CHOICE but to Play Double Duty

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”) took a first formal step in evaluating how the regulations implementing the Volcker Rule should be revised by issuing a request for public input on the regulations in early August, with comments due in late September.  Of the 55 comment…
Continue Reading Volcker Rule Commenters Largely Support Reforms