The SOLO Network has launched a bank reliance pilot with the US Treasury, FinCEN, OCC, and FDIC for reusable verification.
The initiative described as the first coordinated engagement across all four agencies aimed at operationalising bank reliance at scale, allowing customer verification completed by one financial institution to be reused by another.
Addressing duplicated verification
Financial institutions have historically repeated identity and compliance verification on the same consumers and businesses, even when that work had already been performed elsewhere. According to the SOLO Network, this duplication has not stemmed from a lack of verification but from the absence of a common method for institutions to evaluate, evidence, and audit verification carried out by other parties, combined with limited incentive to share completed work.
The SOLO Network does not require participating institutions to standardise how they perform verification. Instead, it standardises how completed verification is represented, evidenced, and independently assessed. In addition, participating institutions generate standardised, auditable verification artefacts that document the evidence reviewed, the work performed, and the standards applied. These artefacts can then be evaluated by other institutions in the network, which retain full discretion to determine whether the verification meets their own compliance and risk requirements.
Model and scale
The network is positioned as a data-sharing and verification-reuse model for banks and fintechs, incentivising collaboration around shared, auditable records rather than duplicated processes. The SOLO Network draws a comparison with the TSA PreCheck programme, under which vetted travellers move through security screening without repeating the full process at each airport; similarly, the network is designed to let verified customer data travel between financial institutions rather than requiring consumers to restart verification with every new relationship.
A SOLO Network representative said the industry does not require a single entity to verify all customers, but rather a consistent way for any institution to issue reusable verification that others can independently assess, adding that the pilot removes the need for institutions to standardise their internal processes while still enabling trusted work to be shared.
Regulatory context
Bank reliance provisions already exist within US financial regulation and within sponsor banking arrangements, but the SOLO Network states that consistent implementation across institutions has remained operationally difficult. The pilot with FinCEN, the OCC, the FDIC, and the Treasury is intended to demonstrate a workable framework for institutions to rely on each other's verification work while each retains independent compliance decision-making.
