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Ethan G. Ostroff

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Ethan’s practice focuses on financial services litigation and compliance counseling, as well as digital assets and blockchain technology. With a long track record of successful litigation results across the U.S., both bank and non-bank clients rely on him for comprehensive advice throughout their business cycle.

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Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) released the spring edition of its Supervisory Highlights report, providing a high-level overview of alleged unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices identified by the agency during examinations from April 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023. According to the report, examiners have continued to find deficiencies in consumer reporting agencies’ (CRAs) compliance with the accuracy and identity theft requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) as well as deficiencies in furnishers’ compliance with the accuracy and dispute investigation requirements.

In March, a district court in the Eastern District of California followed other courts holding that an undated, model form debt validation notice does not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). Specifically, the court found that the plaintiff’s barebones allegations about purported financial, reputational, and emotional harm did not confer Article III standing.

On March 29, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) released its Consumer Response Annual Report, providing a high-level overview of the 1,657,600 consumer complaints received by the Bureau from January 1 through December 31, 2023. According to the report, the most-complained-about consumer financial product and service categories in 2023 were consumer reporting (79%), debt collection (7%), credit card (4%), checking or savings account (4%), and mortgage (2%). The CFPB’s 2023 Consumer Response Report found a continued increase in consumer reporting complaints, with more than one million of such complaints sent to the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies (CRA). The CFPB encourages companies to consider how best to incorporate complaint information into their institutional processes to help ensure that problems are detected early and addressed quickly.

In Martinez v. Celtic Bank, the Southern District of New York recently denied a motion for summary judgment finding that a jury could consider an investigation reckless when a furnisher fails to review any records other than a payment history in response to a dispute that an account was erroneously reported as delinquent.

On March 7, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final rule updating recordkeeping requirements and extending the protections against misrepresentations of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) to businesses (Final Rule). It also announced a notice of proposed rulemaking to extend the TSR’s coverage to inbound telemarketing calls involving technical support services. These actions are part of the FTC’s current review of the TSR, which includes the Do Not Call (DNC) Registry rules and provisions banning nearly all telemarketing robocalls to consumers.