Opinion: this column reflects the author’s own analysis and argued position.
I think the OCC should make every national trust bank applicant publish which of its planned activities are fiduciary and which are not. Two applications filed on 5 October show why, and a lawsuit filed three days earlier shows what rides on the answer.
Two filings, two activity lists
On 5 October, Rain announced an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for Rain National Trust Bank. Its release lists three lines of business: custody of digital assets and US dollars, reserve management for permitted stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, and issuance and redemption of US dollar-backed stablecoins as issuer of record. It says the bank would not accept deposits, offer consumer accounts or make commercial loans.
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The same day, Modern Treasury announced its own application. Its proposed bank would be a limited-purpose national trust bank offering custody of digital assets with related fiat services, and the release says it would not make loans or issue stablecoins.
Both releases describe a trust bank. Only one of them describes a bank that issues a stablecoin. Neither filing is the problem. The missing piece is a plain statement of how each activity on the list is classified.
The lawsuit turns on that classification
On 2 October, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The group asks the court to find unlawful the agency’s 2 March 2026 final rule and Interpretive Letter No. 1176, which the OCC’s trust charter approvals rest on. In the complaint, ICBA says the OCC has approved or conditionally approved national trust bank charters for 21 trust banks, at least 13 of them crypto companies, and argues the National Bank Act does not let the OCC charter trust banks that are neither depository nor fiduciary.
ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey put it this way in the group’s statement: “Any non-fiduciary firm seeking the benefits of a federal bank charter should meet the same standards as community banks.”
Whatever a court decides about the rule, the same question will come back to each application: is this activity fiduciary? Rain’s release is already organised around that line. It says client assets would be held “as a fiduciary” and that custody assets are held for identified owners and are not liabilities of the bank. It does not say whether issuing a stablecoin as issuer of record belongs on the fiduciary side. I do not know the OCC’s answer, and a reader of the release cannot work it out.
What I would require
Each application should come with a one-page schedule, public during the comment period that Rain’s release says applies. The schedule would list every planned activity, say whether the applicant treats it as fiduciary, cite the legal basis, and say whether the client’s assets are custody assets or liabilities of the bank. It would cost an applicant an afternoon, since the activity lists already exist in the press releases.
The schedule also gives commenters something to test. Brandon Soto, the proposed president and CEO of Rain National Trust Bank, set a standard in the release: “I have sat across from bank examiners for twenty years, and the best answer you can give is, ‘Here’s the reconciliation.'” A schedule that says what is held, for whom and under what classification is the document a reconciliation gets attached to.
The strongest objection
The OCC already reviews every application in detail, so a published schedule adds paper without adding scrutiny. A court may also settle the classification question for all applicants at once, which would make a per-application schedule redundant.
I take the first point seriously. The public comment period only works if commenters can see how an activity is classified. Without that, they are commenting on a press release. On the second point, I cannot say when a court will rule, and the applications are moving now. A ruling that rewrites the rule would still leave each applicant needing to say how its own activities map onto whatever the court says fiduciary means.
Modern Treasury CEO Matt Marcus said in his company’s release: “Pursuing this charter will add direct federally supervised digital asset custody and related services to the infrastructure our customers already use.” That is a clear description of an activity, and the schedule I am asking for would just put the legal label beside it.
I see no reason the OCC has to wait for the court or for Congress before it asks applicants for this.
Related reading: the charter race for AI-agent banking and how US and UK regulators now write crypto rules around custody.
Source: Rain
