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Educating and Advocating for Dynamic Financial Services and Public Policies

The Center's Perspective

  • Highlight the critical need for modernization of financial regulation to support financial stability, consumer protection and secure financial networks.
  • Provide an experienced, independent perspective on financial services policy.
  • Engage top financial policymakers on cutting-edge issues.
  • Provide educational presentations on critical developing issues.
  • Advocate for increased cybersecurity and the creation of new and safer cyberspace alternatives.
  • Consider the appropriate balance of regulation between banks and FinTech firms.
  • Advocate for real-time supervision that is functionally based.
  • Forge new ideas to better predict and prevent massive future financial crises.
  • Address the extraordinary advances in technology that will change the creation and delivery of financial products and services including Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, and Peer-to-Peer networks.

The Center's Mission

View of the two-story atrium in the Marriner S. Eccles Building. For more information, visit http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/aroundtheboard/buildings.htm
  • The Center brings together regulatory policymakers, business executives, legislators, technology experts, and consumer advocates to:
  • Provide "Meet the Policymakers Forums" that will offer thoughtful and probing interviews with leading public officials in the financial services area.
  • Offer programs where leading financial services professionals, regulators, trade associations representatives, consumer group representatives, counsel, and advisors to discuss and debate key issues in FinTech and financial regulation.
  • Advance financial policy through the publication of articles and op-eds that encourage discussion and debate of the critical issues impacting FinTech and the modernization and enhancement of financial regulation.

The Center's Leadership

Thomas P. Vartanian

Thomas P. Vartanian

Executive Director 

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Tom is a counselor, futurist, and former regulator and is author of nationally-acclaimed 200 Years of American Financial Panics: Crashes, Recessions, Depressions, and the Technology That Will Change It All. He chaired the Financial Institutions practices at two international law firms, Dechert LLP and Fried Frank LLP. Prior to that, he was General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the first S&L Crisis. He began his career at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, where he was Special Assistant to the Chief Counsel. He has represented parties in 30 of the 50 largest financial institution collapses in America and has been at the forefront of the regulatory and policy issues regarding the development and deployment of financial technology since 1977.

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Robert H. Ledig

Robert H. Ledig,

Managing Director

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Bob is an attorney and educator who focuses on financial regulation and FinTech. He is an author and editor of a number of books, including The Volcker Rule: Commentary and Analysis, 21st Century Money, Banking & Commerce, and The Fair Lending Guide. Bob was a partner in the Financial Institutions practices at Dechert LLP and Fried Frank LLP. He began his career as an attorney with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.

Together Tom and Bob have more than eight decades of experience with financial services, financial regulation, and FinTech. Prior to establishing the Center, Tom and Bob were Professors of Law at George Mason University's Scalia Law School, where they launched the School's Program on Financial Regulation & Technology and its Financial Services Regulation Law Concentration.

 

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