When a community bank or a credit union decides to launch a fintech program, it’s not just about navigating technological challenges; there’s also a complex, manual-heavy process of performing due diligence on the fintech partner during the onboarding process. This step, while essential, can overwhelm banks with the sheer amount of work involved. As per FDIC guidelines, banks must perform assessments on fintechs in several key risk areas. These include everything from business model sustainability to cybersecurity and regulatory compliance. Below are the primary areas banks are required to evaluate:

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Key Areas of Due Diligence for Fintech Onboarding:

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1. Business Risk – Evaluating the fintech’s business model, revenue streams, and sustainability.
2. Financial Risk – Assessing financial stability, funding sources, and financial statements.
3. Regulatory Compliance Risk – Ensuring adherence to federal and state regulations, including OCC and FFIEC guidelines.
4. Risk Management & Controls – Reviewing fintech policies, procedures, and internal controls.
5. Information Security Risk – Analyzing cybersecurity measures, data protection policies, and SOC 2 compliance.
6. Strategic Risk – Understanding long-term viability, growth plans, and alignment with bank goals.
7. Third-Party Risk Management – Identifying dependencies on vendors and service providers.
8. Operational Risk – Examining fraud controls, dispute resolution, and system resilience.
9. BSA/AML/OFAC Compliance – Validating anti-money laundering (AML) programs and OFAC screening practices.
10. Reputation Risk – Identifying potential risks to your bank’s brand and public perception.
11. Insurance Risk – Reviewing coverage policies for fraud, cyber incidents, and financial loss.
12. Legal Risk – Assessing contracts, regulatory exposure, and potential litigation risks.
13. Cross-Channel Risk – Evaluating risks in multi-channel transactions and customer interactions.

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The Challenges Community Banks Face

While these risk areas are critical for ensuring a successful fintech partnership, the process of gathering, reviewing, and analyzing all the necessary information presents several challenges:

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1. Creating the End-to-End Assessment Process: 

   Developing a comprehensive and standardized process to evaluate fintechs across multiple risk areas is time-consuming and complex.
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2. Resource Constraints:
   The manual work required to collect documents, review them, and follow up with fintech partners often results in a significant drain on resources, leaving compliance teams overwhelmed.
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3. Comprehensive Risk Evaluation:
   Conducting a thorough assessment of a fintech’s risk profile across all the required areas—business, financial, operational, and more—requires deep expertise and attention to detail.
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4. Report Preparation:
   After the evaluation, a detailed report with recommendations must be prepared for the risk committee, which adds another layer of work to an already taxing process.

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Across Helps Streamline Fintech Onboarding

At Across, we understand these pain points and provide a complete solution to alleviate the burden on community banks. Our end-to-end service offers both technology and human analysts to handle the entire fintech onboarding process. Our platform streamlines the risk assessment and due diligence process, automating key tasks and ensuring that each fintech is thoroughly evaluated across all relevant risk areas. The result? Banks can onboard more fintech, faster, without needing to expand their existing compliance teams. By saving time, reducing manual effort, and improving accuracy, Across not only cuts down on operational costs but also ensures that community banks can move quickly and confidently into fintech partnerships. Fintech onboarding doesn’t have to be a manual overload for community banks and credit unions. With Across, banks can simplify the due diligence process, enhance their compliance efforts, and focus on growing their fintech programs without the constant strain on resources. Ready to streamline your fintech onboarding process? Let Across take the headache out of compliance for you.

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About Across

Across provides real-time, decision-ready onboarding and ongoing risk assessments for banks working with fintech partners. By combining automation with risk intelligence, Across helps financial institutions maintain continuous oversight, scale compliance infrastructure, and confidently operate Banking-as-a-Service programs in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.

Follow Across for insights on fintech risk, regulatory developments, and the future of bank-fintech partnerships.

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