Blue Ridge Bank is in “troubled condition” according to the OCC

It was only?Thursday?of last week when our lead story was about the challenges banks were facing in the Banking-as-a-Service space.

Then Friday we learned that Blue Ridge Bank was hit with its second regulatory action in less than 18 months and is now deemed to be in a “troubled condition”.

Kudos to our unofficial fintech regulatory watchdog, Jason Mikula, for breaking?this story. American Banker also?picked it up?on Friday.

Blue Ridge Bank is a $3.3 billion-asset bank based in Virginia and was an early mover in the BaaS space. The consent order came out of the OCC’s June exam and Blue Ridge claims to have made significant progress since then.

The banks needs to ramp up its AML controls, capital position and third party management.

It is interesting that industry expert Jonah Crane said “every bank with a large BaaS program will see some type of regulatory action over the next year.”

For the fintech companies that rely on these banks for banking services, this is bad news. Building redundancy into your banking partnerships is now essential.

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