Blue Ridge Bank picks Fed vet to lead fintech division
Charlottesville, Virginia-based Blue Ridge Bank named Kirsten Muetzel, a 10-year veteran of the Federal Reserve, as president of its fintech division, the bank announced Tuesday.
The move comes about four months after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) ordered the bank to improve its oversight of third-party fintech partnerships.
Blue Ridge and another Virginia-based bank, FVCB, finalized a planned merger last January, about two months after delaying the transaction due to “certain regulatory concerns” the OCC found with Blue Ridge.
“Kirsten is a respected thought leader in the industry and she brings the perfect combination of banking supervisory experience combined with fintech industry knowledge and business acumen,” Blue Ridge CEO Brian Plum said in a statement Tuesday. “Kirsten will be instrumental as we continue to build the necessary infrastructure to support current partnerships while preparing the foundation to build future success.”
Muetzel served in a variety of roles for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco between 2008 and 2019. She specialized in financial sector policy and analysis and counterparty credit risk analysis before serving as chief of staff for the region’s financial institutions supervision and credit unit, capping her tenure as a central point of contact, according to her LinkedIn profile.
She later served as CFO for two fintechs, Metal and EarnUp, and chief risk officer for two more: Synctera and Fundid. Muetzel also spent more than three years focusing on capital raising and M&A advisory services at Goldman Sachs.
At Blue Ridge, Muetzel is set to manage a portfolio of partners, strengthen regulatory compliance and advance the bank’s banking-as-a-service strategy.
“There continues to be significant opportunity for banks to develop relationships with fintech firms and create new revenue streams while improving products and services for existing customers,” Muetzel said. “Many of these fintech schemes are focused on improving access to financial services, which can make a real difference to someone’s daily life, thereby inspiring me.”
Under the OCC’s order, Blue Ridge must obtain the regulator’s no-objection before entering into new contracts with fintech partners or adding new products in collaboration with existing partners.
The bank also agreed to show, in an “action plan,” how it would better monitor suspicious activity, including “high-risk customer activity involving … third-party fintech partners.”
A Blue Ridge-appointed compliance committee must also provide quarterly details of corrective actions the bank intends to implement, the timelines for completing them, the names of those responsible, and status updates on those actions.
Tuesday’s action presumably puts a new name at the top of the list.
