On February 10, the Department of Justice and the North Carolina Attorney General filed a consent decree to settle claims that a Charlotte-area “buy here pay here” dealer engaged in intentionally discriminatory “reverse redlining” practices. The regulators alleged that the defendants specifically targeted African-American customers and imposed onerous credit terms upon them without regard to
The Federal Trade Commission has released a Staff Report addressing the “Internet of Things” – a phrase referring to everyday items that are able to connect to the internet and transmit data. The Internet of Things includes over 25 billion connected devices worldwide, including fitness trackers, connected appliances, and more. Estimates are that by 2020,
On January 5, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it was creating a new complaint portal. As shown on the FCC form for complaints, which can be found here (Word format) and here (.pdf), this portal is very much designed to capture complaints arising from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and, specifically, automatic telephone
Last week, the United States Senate passed an extension of the Mortgage Debt Forgiveness Act. Without the Act, any home mortgage forgiveness that results from a short sale would have counted as income for homeowners. In other words, homeowners that had short sales in 2014 will not have to pay taxes on the mortgage debt
On December 15, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published its annual report on joint credit card agreements between colleges and financial institutions. The report showed a nearly seventy percent (70%) decline in the number of agreements since Congress passed new disclosure requirements in 2009. In 2009, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure
On December 11, 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a report and announced that it will be requiring major credit reporting agencies (CRAs) to provide regular reports to the CFPB identifying, by name, potentially problematic furnishers of information. In other words, the CFPB will be co-opting the major CRAs into helping the CFPB
On November 19, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed dismissal of plaintiff borrowers’ claims against a foreclosure trustee and held that the trustee did not breach fiduciary duties by proceeding to foreclosure over borrowers’ objections.
The case centered on an oft-repeated scenario in which plaintiff borrowers were discussing a potential
The American Financial Services Association (AFSA), a consumer credit industry trade association, released a study this month that took issue with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s method of measuring discrimination in the automotive lending business.
The study, which was carried out by Charles River Associates and based on over eight million vehicle finance contracts issued
Thirty-eight state and territorial attorneys general recently sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting that it update its Telemarketing Sales Rules to help further protect against telemarketing fraud and abuse.
While the state attorneys general support existing Telemarketing Sales Rules, the group listed a number of concerns, including:
One of the most controversial and significant federal regulatory initiatives in consumer finance is the view of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that credit discrimination can be proven by statistical disparities.
We previously reported here on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear a disparate impact case in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs