All Things FinReg

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on February 16 issued an internal process regulation—effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register—updating and formalizing the steps that supervised institutions may take to appeal certain adverse supervisory findings and ratings. While there are minimal substantive changes, the regulation is informative in its acknowledgment of the significant centralization of authority under a single supervision director that the CFPB had previously not widely publicized.

Financial services is perhaps the most regulated industry in the world, and the intersection between financial services, technology, and law remains a complicated and evolving space. A team of Morgan Lewis lawyers recently attended the 2023 Money 20/20 conference and previewed some major themes and trends that the industry can expect in 2024.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB, the Bureau) promulgated on March 30 its final rule implementing Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The rule requires that covered financial institutions collect and report to the Bureau data on applications for credit by small businesses (those having gross revenue of under $5 million in their latest fiscal year).

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend Regulation Z (the Proposal), which implements the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), to better ensure that late fees charged on credit card accounts are “reasonable and proportional” to late payments as required under the Credit Card Accountability and Disclosure Act of 2009 (Card Act).

For the second time in a month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has proposed a new rule that would require businesses to report already public information and thereby increase the burdens on, and risks to, the nonbank financial services industry, which may ultimately increase costs to consumers or slow the proliferation of new products that benefit consumers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) has proposed a registry in which certain nonbank financial institutions must deposit copies of certain federal, state, and local orders. The proposed rule would also require a subset of larger nonbank financial institutions already subject to the Bureau’s supervisory authority to designate an individual to attest to compliance with such orders.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) recently released its Spring Supervisory Highlights summarizing findings from supervisory exams it conducted between July and December 2021.

On January 5, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a report detailing consumer complaint deficiencies by the national credit reporting agencies (NCRAs). Specifically, the CFPB found that, in 2021, the NCRAs together reported relief in response to less than 2% of covered complaints, down from nearly 25% of covered complaints in 2019. The CFPB noted three fact patterns believed to lead to inaccurate consumer credit reporting and thus potentially the denial of credit or offer of credit on less favorable terms.

On April 27, 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a final rule formally delaying the mandatory compliance date for the rule defining a “qualified mortgage” (QM) (the General QM Final Rule) from July 1, 2021 to October 1, 2022.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a Statement of Policy (Statement) on March 8 making it clear that going forward it will exercise its full authority to penalize covered persons found to have engaged in abusive acts or practices, 12 U.S.C. §5536(a)(1)(B), in violation of its core consumer protection authority. In doing so, the Bureau’s acting director rescinded a January 20, 2020, Policy Statement (2020 Statement) issued by a director appointed by former President Donald Trump, in which the Bureau advised, among other things which we have previously discussed, that it would generally not seek civil penalties for “abusive conduct” unless there had been a lack of a good faith effort to comply with the law.