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Taylor Gess

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Taylor focuses her practice on providing regulatory advice on matters related to federal and state consumer protection, consumer finance, and payments laws, including those that apply to payment cards, lines of credit, installment loans, electronic payments, online banking, buy-now-pay-later transactions, retail installment contracts, rental-purchase transactions, and small business loans.

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In this crossover episode of Payments Pros and The Consumer Finance Podcast, Taylor Gess is joined by colleagues James Stevens and Sarah Hanna from Troutman Pepper Locke’s Corporate and Consumer Financial Services practices to discuss the surge of interest among fintech and point-of-sale finance companies in obtaining bank charters, acquiring existing banks, and forming bank partnerships. With the current administration signaling an open-for-business posture at the federal banking agencies, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) actively encouraging de novo applications, payment and fintech companies are weighing their options more seriously than they have in years. The conversation covers what is driving the spike in charter applications, including from companies in the crypto, lending, and payments spaces, and how specialty charters are factoring into that trend. James and Sarah also walk through the bank partnership landscape, where enforcement activity has cooled and focus has shifted, and explain how acquiring an existing bank charter compares to starting from scratch on timing, cost, and regulatory complexity. The episode closes with practical guidance for point-of-sale finance companies considering any of these three paths, including why building internal compliance infrastructure early, engaging regulators informally, and retaining regulatory counsel sooner rather than later can make or break a successful launch.

As we reported in December 2025, New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights (DCR) adopted what its Attorney General described as the “most comprehensive state-level disparate impact regulations in the country” under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD). Those rules, effective December 15, 2025, codify a broad burden-shifting framework for disparate impact claims across housing, lending, employment, public accommodations, and contracting, and include specific guidance on liability arising from the use of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making tools. Now, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has filed suit to stop them.

On August 26, New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie introduced Senate Bill S10688, legislation that would enact an express “opt out” from key provisions of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (DIDMCA), purporting to impose New York’s interest rate limitations on a broad range of consumer credit transactions. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Rules the same day. This proposed legislation marks the latest development in a continuing trend of state efforts to regulate state-chartered banks and fintech partnerships and impose restrictions on bank-model lending.

On August 25, seven federal agencies — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau), National Credit Union Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), U.S. Department of Justice, and Federal Housing Finance Agency (the agencies) — jointly rescinded the February 2022 “Interagency Statement on Special Purpose Credit Programs Under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B,” effective immediately upon Federal Register publication. The agencies’ stated reason for the rescission was to clarify that creditors may not discriminate against borrowers based on prohibited characteristics, and that creditors should not rely on the Interagency Statement or related guidance going forward concerning special purpose credit programs (SPCPs). Curiously, the Federal Reserve Board, which joined in issuing the original Interagency Statement, was not a party to the notice of rescission, instead electing to separately withdraw its own version rather than join the other agencies in the joint rescission.

This article was republished on insideARM on August 19, 2026.

On August 11, the Colorado Department of Law (DOL) filed proposed rules implementing two significant Colorado artificial intelligence laws, the Automated Decision-Making Technology in Consequential Decisions Act (ADMT Act) and the Conversational Artificial Intelligence Services Act (Chatbot Safety Act), both of which take effect January 1, 2027. As we reported in May (here), the Colorado legislature significantly rewrote its earlier 2024 AI law, replacing the prior framework with a more targeted set of obligations focused on automated decision-making technology (ADMT) in consequential decisions. The proposed rules represent the Attorney General’s effort to flesh out that framework before the upcoming effective date. They also begin to answer several of the questions we flagged as unresolved when the new law was signed.

In this special crossover episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast and Hiring to Firing, hosts Taylor Gess, Tracey Diamond, and Emily Schifter map out obligations hiding in plain sight for multistate financial services employers. The conversation covers crafting a legally defensible employee handbook, pay transparency complexities, and wage and hour classification risks. Together, they deliver guidance for banks, fintechs, lenders, and card issuers operating across state lines, in addition to addressing the thorny intersection of earned wage access, remote workers, and the rapidly evolving assortment of AI hiring laws. It is the episode every financial services employer should hear before their next hire, expansion, or employment compliance review.

In this crossover episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast and Payments Pros, Taylor Gess is joined by colleagues James Stevens and Sarah Hanna from Troutman Pepper Locke’s Corporate and Consumer Financial Services practices to discuss the surge of interest among fintech and point-of-sale finance companies in obtaining bank charters, acquiring existing banks, and forming bank partnerships. With the current administration signaling an open-for-business posture at the federal banking agencies, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) actively encouraging de novo applications, payment and fintech companies are weighing their options more seriously than they have in years. The conversation covers what is driving the spike in charter applications, including from companies in the crypto, lending, and payments spaces, and how specialty charters are factoring into that trend. James and Sarah also walk through the bank partnership landscape, where enforcement activity has cooled and focus has shifted, and explain how acquiring an existing bank charter compares to starting from scratch on timing, cost, and regulatory complexity. The episode closes with practical guidance for point-of-sale finance companies considering any of these three paths, including why building internal compliance infrastructure early, engaging regulators informally, and retaining regulatory counsel sooner rather than later can make or break a successful launch.

New York City is moving aggressively into consumer protection territory that federal regulators have largely stepped back from. In January 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed two executive orders directing the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) to crack down on hidden fees and subscription tricks and traps. DCWP has now followed through, finalizing a first-of-its-kind municipal click-to-cancel rule (previously discussed here and here) and publishing a proposed citywide “junk fee” ban.

In this crossover episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast and Regulatory Oversight, Taylor Gess is joined by colleagues Michael Yaghi and Lane Page from Troutman Pepper Locke’s State AG and Regulatory Investigations, Strategy + Enforcement practice groups to discuss the hottest areas of state regulatory activity in the point-of-sale space. With federal consumer protection enforcement pulling back in certain areas under the current administration, state regulatory agencies are stepping into the spotlight to take an industrywide approach to point-of-sale finance. The conversation covers regulatory scrutiny around buy now, pay later (BNPL) products following the CFPB’s withdrawal of its interpretive rule, a coordinated seven-state inquiry into the U.S.’s largest BNPL providers, and what providers should be doing now to assess their own compliance posture. They also dig into the solar and home improvement finance sector, where states are challenging fee disclosures and targeting finance provider-merchant relationships, as well as the growing rent-to-own enforcement landscape. The episode closes with a look at what Rohit Chopra’s new role leading California’s consolidated consumer protection agency could mean for the financial services industry, with both California and New York positioning themselves as state-level successors to the CFPB’s prior enforcement mission.

Yesterday, the federal banking regulators issued new interagency guidance directing supervised financial institutions to take a closer look at credit risk when lending to individuals who are not legally authorized to work in the U.S. The guidance, issued jointly by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), follows a May 2026 Executive Order (discussed here) aimed at addressing perceived risks to the financial system arising from the extension of credit to the non-work authorized population.