Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

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As discussed here, on October 19, 2022, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Community Financial Services Association of America, Limited (CFSA) v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) held that the CFPB’s funding mechanism violates the appropriations clause because the CFPB does not receive its funding from annual congressional appropriations like most executive agencies, but instead, receives funding directly from the Federal Reserve based on a request by the CFPB’s director. In response, the CFPB filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court. On February 27, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the CFPB’s petition (discussed here).

On July 7th, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Treasury (collectively, the agencies) jointly issued a Request for Information (Request) seeking public comment on medical credit cards, loans, and other financial products used to pay for health care. Specifically, the agencies are interested in information regarding whether these products contribute to health care cost inflation, displace hospital provided financial assistance, lead to inaccurate or inflated medical bills, inflate bills due to financing costs, or otherwise harm patients financially.

As shown by a new report, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) is focusing its fair lending work on mortgage origination and pricing, small business lending, redlining, and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models.

On June 29, the CFPB released its annual Fair Lending Report (Report) to Congress describing its fair lending enforcement and supervisory activities, guidance, and rulemaking for calendar year 2022. The Report satisfies the CFPB’s statutory responsibility to report annually to Congress on public enforcement actions taken pursuant to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA).

On June 16, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo signed into law Senate Bill 276, which significantly amended Nevada Revised Statute 649, otherwise known as the Nevada Collection Agencies Licensing Act (the Act). The Act regulates the activities of “collection agencies,” or any person “engaging, directly or indirectly, and as a primary or a secondary object business or pursuit, in the collection of or in soliciting or obtaining in any manner the payment of a claim owed or due or asserted to be owed or due to another.” Among other things, Senate Bill 276 expanded the exemptions from the collection agency licensing requirement to include entities that are not debt collectors under § 1692a(6)(A) – (F) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). From a practical perspective, these expanded licensure exemptions should result in many first-party servicers no longer needing to obtain a Nevada collections license. Highlights of Senate Bill 276 include:

As recently discussed on our podcast here, section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require lenders to collect information about small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data concerning the principal owners, lending decisions, and the price of credit. In September 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a proposed rule with more than 900 pages of supplementary material. The Bureau also issued a summary of the proposed rule and a chart of the data points that the rule would require creditors to collect, and it accepted approximately 2,100 comments on the proposal in January 2022. The Bureau then issued the Final Rule on March 30, 2023, with a host of supplementary materials. In this third in a multi-post blog series (first post available here, second here), we will take a closer look at what changed between the proposed rule and the Final Rule.

According to a recent report by WebRecon, the month of May saw a jump significant from the previous month in filings under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), however, remained down.

Do companies that use workplace surveillance tools to make hiring and firing decisions risk violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)? According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) in a recent comment, the answer to that question is yes. The Bureau’s official comment comes in response to a request for information…

After analyzing public feedback on pandemic-related forbearance programs and ways to automate and streamline long-term loss mitigation assistance, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau), Rohit Chopra, issued a blogpost indicating the CFPB will be proposing ways to “simplify and streamline” mortgage servicing rules.

“Many commenters noted that borrowers seeking help…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) has signaled that it intends to propose a rule that would allow it to exercise supervisory authority over a greater number of nonbank financial companies that participate in the consumer payments market.

Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), the CFPB has authority…

As recently discussed on our podcast here, section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require lenders to collect information about small business credit applications they receive, including geographic and demographic data concerning the principal owners, lending decisions, and the price of credit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued its massive, highly technical, and complicated Final Rule on March 30, 2023. In this second in a multi-post blog series (the first post is available here), we will take a closer look at the data collection and reporting requirements of the Final Rule.