Five Surprising Industrial Banks

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Industrial banks or industrial loan companies (ILCs) are regulated on a state level, but not federally. The financial reform bill had intentions to bring all banks under the same oversight, but it seems the ILC's have dodged the bullet once again.

Industrial Banks Buy Time

Instead, the bill only calls for a study to be completed within 18 months to determine whether ILC's can remain separate or come under the same supervision as a bank holding company. This issue has been before Congress and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. since 2006.

Originally, ILCs were formed by corporations looking to lend money to their own customers but many eventually branched out to engage in more conventional banking activities.

In 1988, after a number of failures by these institutions, the FDIC moved to increase its scrutiny on the industrial banks, but allowed ILCs created before 1987 to avoid bank holding company status. The most well-known of the ILCs with grandfather status is General Electric's(GE) GE Capital Corp.

Currently there are 56 ILCs, mostly headquartered in Utah and California. The list includes some surprising names, and their parent companies lobbied hard for them to retain their status, so they must have a good thing going.

Here are five companies that we think you'd never expect to own a bank unregulated at the federal level: