All Things FinReg

The US Supreme Court ruled on May 16, 2024 that the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—which is funded with money from the Federal Reserve rather than the US Congress—does not run afoul of the Appropriations Clause of the US Constitution. The Court’s decision reversed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that the CFPB’s funding structure was unconstitutional and put a definitive end to the last pending wholesale challenge to the CFPB’s constitutionality.

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.

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 In doing so, the Bureau’s acting director rescinded a January 20, 2020, Policy Statement (2020 Statement) issued by a director appointed by former President Donald Trump, in which the Bureau advised, among other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.