LendingClub Completes Standard Operating Agreement for New Bank

LendingClub exited the standard operating agreement for a new bank with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, having met all the requirements noted in the operating agreement.

The company now has more autonomy and flexibility in how it runs the business and deploys capital, while it continues to work closely with regulators.

The operating agreement began in connection with LendingClub’s acquisition of Radius Bancorp and the formation of LendingClub Bank in February 2021, the company said in a Friday (Feb. 2) filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“The operating agreement set forth certain parameters that the bank was required to operate within,” LendingClub said in the filing. “Per its original terms, the operating agreement expired on Feb. 2, 2024.”

LendingClub acquired Radius Bancorp for $185 million in February 2020. CEO Scott Sanborn called the deal “transformative,” telling analysts on an earnings call that month that the deal provided LendingClub with additional sources of funding and paved the path for the combined entity to become a digital bank.

Sanborn added during the February 2020 call that the acquisition provided LendingClub with a digital bank with a national footprint in the United States with no physical branches and represented a “superior route to a bank charter.”

LendingClub received the regulatory approvals necessary to close the acquisition of Radius Bancorp in January 2021.

When the company made that announcement, Anuj Nayar, who was vice president and U.S. financial health officer at LendingClub at the time, said the combination of LendingClub and Radius would create the U.S.’s first publicly traded neobank.

The closing of the acquisition gave the company the runway to launch a full suite of banking services in a branchless fashion, PYMNTS reported in February 2022.

In January 2023, LendingClub reported that it had seen continuing growth in deposits since its acquisition of Radius Bank.

“Now that we have scaled the online banking platform that we acquired since the closing of the Radius acquisition in the first quarter of 2021, we have grown the bank from $2.7 billion in assets to $7.6 billion in assets, which is a compounded annual growth rate of over 70%,” Chief Financial Officer Drew LaBenne said during an earnings call at the time.