When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) unveiled its UDAAP exam manual at the end of March 2022, announcing that it had decided to interpret the word “unfair” in Dodd-Frank to prohibit discrimination, even where specific statutes like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act do not apply, we expressed skepticism about the viability of
On June 29, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued an advisory opinion focused on consumer debt collectors and the convenience fees they charge for some payments, such as online or by phone.
Convenience fees — common in many types of financial transactions — have recently been categorized as “junk fees” by the
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Office of Servicemember Affairs released its annual report, detailing over 17,000 complaints filed by servicemembers, veterans, and their families in 2021. The largest number of complaints concerned incorrect information on credit reports; closely related to the first complaint was the failure of credit reporting agencies to swiftly and
In a keynote address at the Consumer Federation of America’s 2022 Consumer Assembly, CFPB Deputy Director Zixta Martinez squarely took aim at “rent-a-bank schemes” in some of the first (if not the first) such comments by a senior CFPB official. Historically, the CFPB has confined itself to “true lender” litigation against participants in high-rate
In a June 17 blog post, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) Director Rohit Chopra announced that the CFPB intends to “move away from highly complicated rules” in favor of “simpler and clearer rules.” As part of this effort, the CFPB will be “dramatically increasing the amount of guidance it is providing to the marketplace” and that it aspires such guidance to be simple and straight forward.
In a blog post released June 15, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) continued to show its interest in credit reporting by Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) lenders. Recognizing the importance of credit reporting to consumers building credit profiles through payment of BNPL obligations, the CFPB encouraged BNPL lenders to report both positive and negative
In a recent post, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) discussed its ongoing efforts to investigate and curtail alleged abuses of the military allotment system by lenders. The military allotment system is a servicemember benefit dating from the Civil War, which allows servicemembers to automatically pay certain expenses directly from their pay. The importance
On June 3, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a request for information that could form the basis for a major update of its digital advertising guidance. The FTC’s most recent digital advertising guidance is its 2013 “.com Disclosures – How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising” (.com Disclosures Guide). The .com
On May 25, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) published a blog post, examining what it describes as the “practice of suppressing payment data.”
Per the blog post, the CFPB alleges that its research conducted in 2020 “uncovered that only about half of the largest credit card companies contribute data to credit
On May 26, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) announced that federal anti-discrimination law requires companies to explain to applicants the specific reasons for denying an application for credit or taking other adverse actions, even if the creditor is relying on credit models using complex algorithms.
In a corresponding Consumer Financial Protection Circular