The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settled action on April 22 with Canadian company RevenueWire (the Company) and its CEO to resolve allegations that the Company assisted and facilitated two tech-support scams that the FTC had previously targeted. Under the alleged scheme, consumers were marketed tech support services to “fix” nonexistent computer problems, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars of consumer injury. The FTC’s complaint and consent judgment maintain that, in addition to serving as a lead generator for the alleged fraudsters, the Company processed consumer credit card charges on their behalf.
A recent legal conference in Washington, DC, highlighted newly proposed and ongoing regulatory changes in California concerning consumer and commercial lending. In short, one of the conference’s messages was that lending enforcement is increasing and the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) is becoming much more aggressive in its enforcement posture (including with respect to treating retail installment sales contracts and merchant cash-advance products as loans).
The DBO Commissioner, Manuel Alvarez, was installed last spring and is a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) enforcement attorney. He has already made some noticeable changes in the DBO’s enforcement posture, and we expect to see more enforcement actions brought in the months and years to come under his leadership.
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, in conjunction with the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, issued a joint statement on December 3 to provide more clarity regarding Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance for banks that service customers with hemp-related businesses.
As a global team, we pay attention to financial regulatory and fintech events happening around the world. In that spirit, we are reporting on some intriguing new regulatory initiatives that were announced at the Singapore FinTech Festival in relation to artificial intelligence (AI) and the intersection of sustainability, finance, and technology. Regulation will underpin many of these initiatives and it will be key for government to work with business and lawyers to ensure the law is robust, is fit for purpose, and can keep pace with the raft of proposals.
Singapore Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Heng Swee Keat announced several new projects to help his nation remain current with technology as a way to assist the economy and improve Singapore citizens’ lives. The projects—all part of Singapore’s new “National AI Strategy”—include the development of a chatbot to allow Singaporeans to report municipal issues, including subject matter details, and receive identification of the appropriate government agency to resolve the matter. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) reported improving linkage and collaboration with French and Canadian markets.
In addition to releasing a finalized No-Action Letter (NAL) Policy, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) also issued a revised Trial Disclosure Policy and Compliance Assistance Sandbox Policy on September 10.
Trial Disclosure Policy
Through its revised Trial Disclosure Policy, the CFPB has created the CFPB Disclosure Sandbox. Now, entities seeking to improve consumer disclosures may conduct in-market testing of alternative disclosures for a limited time upon permission by the CFPB. The Dodd-Frank Act gives the CFPB the authority to provide certain legal protections for entities to conduct trial disclosure programs. The new policy largely streamlines the application and review process, provides greater protection from liability (which also extends to agents of the waiver recipient), and allows for a time-limited extension for successful disclosure tests.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized its revised No-Action Letter (NAL) Policy and issued its first NAL under the revised policy on September 10, in response to a request by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on behalf of more than 1,600 housing counseling agencies (HCAs) that participate in HUD’s housing counseling program.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), working in partnership with multiple state regulators, announced on September 10 that it has launched the American Consumer Financial Innovation Network (ACFIN) to strengthen coordination among federal and state regulators in order to facilitate financial innovation. ACFIN is a network of federal and state officials and regulators with authority over markets for consumer financial products and services. The CFPB invited all state regulators to join ACFIN, and the initial members of ACFIN are the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. The network may include state attorneys general, state financial regulators, and federal financial regulators.
According to the CFPB’s press release, ACFIN “enhances shared objectives such as competition, consumer access, and financial inclusion. Additionally, ACFIN promotes regulatory certainty for innovators, benefiting the US economy and consumers alike. The network also seeks to keep pace with market innovations and help ensure they are free from fraud, discrimination, and deceptive practices.”
A working group composed of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a joint statement on July 22 that is intended to provide greater clarity regarding the risk-focused approach used by examiners for planning and performing Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)/anti-money laundering (AML) examinations.
On the theory that three’s a charm, our third and final blog on Hong Kong private equity activities will take a look at Asset Management (Type 9) activities, which are among the most relevant regulated activities for private equity firms in Hong Kong.
Asset Management (Type 9) covers managing, on a discretionary basis, portfolio of securities for and on behalf of a third party. If a private equity firm is licensed by the SFC to carry out the regulated activity of asset management, then in addition to being able to exercise discretionary portfolio management, such firm is able to rely on what is commonly referred to as the “incidental exemption” and market funds under its management or sub-management, without the need to obtain a separate Type 1 license. The Type 9 license is therefore very flexible.
In our first blog on Hong Kong private equity licensing, we looked at Dealing in Securities (Type 1). This second blog deals with Advising on Securities (Type 4).
Advising on Securities (Type 4) includes not only giving advice on acquiring or disposing of securities, but also advising on the terms or conditions on which securities should be acquired or disposed of. There is an important "intra-group" exemption for the requirement for a Type 4 license, and many private equity firms have traditionally relied on this to conduct advisory activities in Hong Kong. This exemption is available if advice on securities is provided by the private equity firms in Hong Kong to (i) any of its wholly-owned subsidiaries; (ii) a holding company which wholly owns the private equity firms; or (iii) wholly-owned subsidiaries of its holding company. The recipient of the advice, recommendation, or research should assess the advice, recommendation or research (as the case may be) and has the discretion to reject it, before issuing the material to its own clients in its own name. In other words, the recipients must assess the advice, and not merely rubber-stamp it.
