On March 7, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it will begin collecting complaints from consumers about online marketplace lenders, signaling its intention to increasingly regulate the evolving and growing Financial Technology (FinTech) industry. The CFPB announcement emphasized that marketplace lending is “a relatively new kind of online…
On February 23, 2016, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray delivered prepared remarks (click link for full text) regarding CFPB regulation of credit unions to the Credit Union National Association. The crux of Director Cordray’s remarks was that the CFPB has affirmatively decided not to exclude credit unions from CFPB…
On February 18, 2016, the CFPB released its final policy regarding the issuance of No-Action Letters (NALs). While some in the industry question the efficacy of the new policy, lenders and other consumer financial service providers should be aware of the policy so they can utilize it if and when…
On January 28, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published its monthly consumer complaint snapshot, identifying the most recent trends in consumer complaints about various financial products and services. CFPB Monthly Complaint Rep., Jan. 2016, at 1. The report analyzes trends by complaint volume by product, state, and company. Id. at 3-10….
On February 3, 2016, in conjunction with a Field Hearing held the same day concerning deposit accounts, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a compliance bulletin on the duties of furnishers of information to maintain adequate policies and procedures that comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) (15…
Scrutiny of the CFPB’s auto-lending supervision and enforcement practices was renewed last week when Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services issued another scathing report criticizing the agency, this time focusing on its handling of the distribution of the Ally Financial auto-lending settlement funds. Concurrently with…
On November 24, 2015, Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee released a report sharply criticizing the CFPB’s methodology for enforcing the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) with regard to indirect automobile lending. The report, entitled, “Unsafe at Any Bureaucracy: CFPB Junk Science and Indirect Auto Lending,” adds to the…
A month has passed since the new TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (“TRID” or “Know Before You Owe”) requirements went into effect on October 3, 2015, and while the transition has not been completely smooth, it has gone better than many expected. Below is a recap of some of the issues that…
**EDITOR’S NOTE: This post was guest-authored by Goodwin Procter partner Joe Yenouskas and associate Alyssa Sussman. Both are members of Goodwin Procter’s Consumer Financial Services Litigation Group.** A series of putative class actions have been filed recently in New York federal courts by borrowers alleging that their mortgage satisfactions were not timely…
Arguably the most pressing topic at this year’s Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Regulatory Compliance Conference (held on September 20-22, 2015 in Washington, D.C.) was the implementation of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) Rule, which will take effect on October 3, 2015. While industry leaders at the conference generally seemed to accept…
A U.S. District Judge in the Northern District of Illinois recently granted summary judgment in favor of defendant PNC Bank on a borrower’s promissory estoppel and Illinois Consumer Fraud Act (ICFA) claims in connection with PNC’s HAMP procedures. In its August 25, 2015 decision the court found that PNC’s actions…
On August 3, 2015, the 11th Circuit held in Ewing Industries Corp. v. Bob Wines Nursery, Inc., No. 14-13842, 2015 WL 4605234 (11th Cir. Aug. 3, 2015) that the pendency of a purported class action does not toll the limitations period for a later class action seeking to represent the same…
On July 9, 2015, the CFPB published a set of Consumer Protection Principles it believes should guide the financial industry in the development of newer, faster methods of payment. These Principles, though merely suggestions, may help members of the financial industry anticipate the expectations of their regulators and develop new…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recent action against two credit card vendors regarding credit monitoring and identity theft protection services is a reminder of the legal risks associated with certain add-on products. The July 1 settlement, in which the CFPB found that the vendors misled customers about the benefits of…
On June 10, 2015, the CFPB issued a Final Rule amending the scope of its regulatory authority to include “larger participants” of the automobile financing industry. Under the Final Rule, the CFPB will supervise certain nonbank auto finance companies that (1) originate loans for the purchase of automobiles; (2) refinance…
A national bank can charge an interest rate that exceeds state law maximums, but the bank’s assignee cannot, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled recently, in a decision that could impact the ability of debt purchasers and others to rely on an originating bank’s federal preemption. The…
On May 4, 2015, Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry, Federal Reserve Board (FRB) Governor Daniel Tarullo, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Martin Gruenberg held the third in a series of outreach meetings to discuss with the public their efforts to reduce the regulatory burden on community banks…
Goodwin Procter’s Consumer Financial Services Enforcement practice today launched Consumer Finance Enforcement Watch, a first-of-its-kind tracking blog to monitor state and federal consumer finance enforcement actions. The blog provides real-time reporting of publicly available enforcement activity taken against consumer financial service companies in key areas, including: mortgage lending and servicing;…
An Illinois federal district court held on March 20, 2015 that California law protects T-Mobile from having to turn over the names and addresses of thousands of its California customers without their consent in response to a third-party subpoena in a nationwide class action. The case, Birchmeier v. Caribbean Cruise Line,…
On March 10, 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its Arbitration Study, which concludes that arbitration agreements in contracts associated with consumer financial products constrain consumers’ ability to assert their rights if a dispute arises. The study, which the CFPB was directed to carry out under Section 1028(a)…