12 U.S.C. § 27 — Certificate of authority to commence banking

(a) After carefully checking the facts reported to him, and any other facts he learns — whether through a special commission he appoints to look into the association, or another way — the Comptroller of the Currency decides if a national banking association is lawfully entitled to start banking. If it is, the Comptroller gives the association a certificate, signed and sealed, saying it complied with all the required provisions and is authorized to begin business. But the Comptroller may withhold this certificate if he has reason to suppose the shareholders formed the association for a purpose other than the legitimate objects contemplated by title 62 of the Revised Statutes (an older banking law). A national bank that already received, or later receives, this certificate isn't illegally constituted just because the Comptroller has required its operations to be limited to acting as a trust company and related activities. (b) (1) The Comptroller may also give this certificate to a national banking association that is owned exclusively (except for directors' qualifying shares required by law) by other depository institutions or their holding companies, and that is organized to serve only those institutions, their holding companies, and their officers, directors, and employees — including providing correspondent banking services when other institutions or their holding companies request them. This kind of association is also called a "banker's bank." (2) A national banking association chartered this way must follow whatever rules, regulations, and orders the Comptroller considers appropriate. Except where those rules, regulations, or orders say otherwise, the banker's bank has the same rights, privileges, duties, restrictions, penalties, liabilities, conditions, and limitations that the national banking laws give to an ordinary national bank.