On Black Friday as most of us were contemplating shopping bargains or metabolizing a big Thanksgiving meal a bombshell dropped about the OCC and its Office of Financial Technology.
The Information released their story while Jason Mikula’s Fintech Business Weekly published an investigative piece on the same day (he first brought this to our attention in September) and Penny Crosman at American Banker also picked up the story.
The OCC’s Office of Financial Technology was established to oversee fintechs and banking-as-a-service and it was announced in March that Prashant Bhardwaj was selected to lead this new department.
Bhardwaj had reportedly held senior technology positions at various large banks including Citi, Fifth Third and Huntington. The trouble is those banks had no records of Bhardwaj ever being an employee let alone a senior technology executive.
His “nearly 30 years of financial industry experience” is also suspect given that sources claimed that Bhardwaj is actually 42 years old.
This is not a good look for the OCC, an organization entrusted to oversee all federally chartered banks. Surely some of their rank and file would have had personal experience in dealing with Bhardwaj and caught this before a public announcement was made.
The good news is that it appears Bhardwaj was not in the role long as by the summer the OCC had quietly updated its website with an acting head and now Donna Murphy, a deputy comptroller, is in the role.
But it does make you wonder about the hiring practices at the OCC…
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