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Lorum files for U.S. national trust bank charter

Wednesday, April 08, 2026 — 16:06:32 (UTC)

Lorum Files for U.S. National Trust Bank Charter to Return Clearing and Custody to a Fiduciary Model

The correspondent institution built on 100% reserves is bringing direct USD clearing infrastructure to the financial platforms the major banks no longer serve

New York, April 8, 2026—Lorum, the specialist correspondent institution serving financial institutions globally, today announced it has filed an application with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter.

This filing is the culmination of a founding thesis: that the correspondent banking system is not broken because of technology or regulation. It is broken because the wrong institutions are running it.

As G-SIBs withdrew from mid-market correspondent relationships, financial institutions turned to the next available option: regional and fintech-forward banks. But those banks are lending institutions. They use institutional client money to fund mortgage portfolios and loan books, and they actively manage their asset base to stay below regulatory thresholds. Their incentive is to hold your money, not move it. Clearing and custody are an afterthought appended to a lending business.

The result is a system that serves almost nobody well. Over the past decade, active correspondent banking relationships have declined by more than 20% across the Americas, according to BIS CPMI data. Financial institutions including PSPs, trading platforms, payroll and EOR operators, and marketplaces sit one or more hops away from primary clearing systems, dependent on intermediary chains they cannot see into and that can terminate without notice. When they cannot reliably access dollar infrastructure, they look elsewhere. That puts pressure on the dollar's utility as the currency of global trade.

Lorum was founded on a different premise: clearing, custody, cash management, and wholesale FX are fiduciary services, and should be run by an institution that holds client funds fully backed by cash and cash equivalents, with no lending book.

Since 2023, that model has been operational, achieving 55x growth in 2025 from a standing start, with USD clearing representing 60% of volumes. Subject to approval, a national trust bank charter would bring the operation under direct OCC supervision and enable Lorum to build direct participation in core U.S. dollar clearing infrastructure.

Lorum's model is built around Named Account Custody, a structure that gives each account holder a legal and operational relationship to the custody framework, reducing the opacity and chain risk of nested clearing models.

George Davis, Co-Founder and CEO of Lorum, said: "The banks serving this market are lending out the money they are supposed to be moving. That is not a technology problem. It is a structural one. Named Account Custody was built to fix it: a legal and regulatory link to every account holder, with no intermediary chain and no lending book in the way. A national trust bank charter is how we deliver that at the scale the market needs."

Lorum is backed by Northzone, Flourish Ventures, Illuminate Financial, and Raba.

The charter application is subject to regulatory review and approval by the OCC.

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Source: Company press release.

Categories: Announcement