Paul Clark

Paul Clark is Senior Counsel in Seward & Kissel LLP’s Financial Services Regulatory Group. Until 2023 Paul was Managing Partner of the firm’s Washington, DC, office.

For over 30 years Paul has advised banks, securities brokers, FinTech companies (including neo-banks, online wealth management firms and crypto asset firms) and trade associations on legislative and regulatory issues enabling or challenging new financial products. 

In addition to representing financial firms on issues pending before Congress, Paul has represented individual firms, coalitions of firms and trade associations on regulations proposed by, and regulatory interpretations of, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and The Depository Trust Company.

Paul has substantial experience navigating the intersection of federal and state banking and securities laws in designing new financial products, including determining how the banking laws apply to a financial product and when a financial product is a “security” or an “investment company” requiring registration with the SEC. He has represented every major brokerage firm and bank in the U.S. on structuring deposit products, including advising Merrill Lynch on replacing money market funds with a bank deposit “sweep” program and IntraFi on the first reciprocal deposit program. Each have been replicated in the market by other financial firms using the template developed by Seward & Kissel.

Paul has recently worked with banks and their FinTech partners in structuring so called “neo-bank” relationships and, through such relationships, multi-bank deposit programs.

Between 2016 and 2020 Paul gave the FinTech lecture at the American Bar Association’s Fundamentals of Banking Law Seminar. He has been a guest lecturer on FinTech at NYU Law School and on the regulation of crypto at the University of Colorado.

Paul is frequently interviewed by the financial press on regulatory issues and has been quoted in articles in Forbes Magazine, Barrons, The Wall Street Journal and the American Banker. He has authored opinion pieces on banking regulation and the regulation of crypto exchanges that have appeared in the American Banker.

Paul and his Seward & Kissel colleagues are the co-authors of the Lexology Survey of U.S. Fintech Law.

In 2019, Seward & Kissel co-sponsored a workshop on privacy and data protection with the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University that included representatives of the FTC and CFPB. In 2023 Seward & Kissel partnered with the Berkeley Center for Law and Business to sponsor a FinTech Forum in New York that included representatives of major FinTech organizations.

Paul is the author of “Just Passing Through: A History and Critical Analysis of FDIC Insurance of Deposits Held by Brokers and Other Custodians” (Review of Banking and Financial Law, 2012-2013) and the co-author of “Regulation of Savings Associations After the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989” (The Business Lawyer, 1990).

Paul is a member of the Advisory Board of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business. 

A former Cal swimmer, Paul trains with the Claremont Streamliners Masters Swimming Team and has competed in the Bay Area Masters Swimming Championships and the USA Masters National Swimming Championships.

Education

A.B., with High Honors and Distinction, University of California, Berkeley (1976)
J.D., Berkeley Law (1980)

Paul T Clark is teaching the following course in Fall 2024:

• 247.3 sec. 001 - FinTech: Tools for Analyzing New Financial Products

Courses During Other Semesters