In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host Chris Willis is joined by litigation partners Massie Cooper and Kalama Lui-Kwan to unpack the rapidly evolving world of mass arbitration and the recent developments reshaping how these disputes are filed, administered, and resolved.
In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host Chris Willis is joined by insurance regulatory and transactions partners Brian Casey and John Emmanuel to introduce Troutman Pepper Locke’s insurance regulatory practice and explore where insurance law and consumer finance regulation intersect.
In this episode of the “Point-of-Sale Finance” series, Jason Cover is joined by colleagues Erin Edwards and Simon Fleischmann from Troutman Pepper Locke’s Consumer Financial Services practice to shift the lens from regulatory compliance to litigation risk. The conversation broadens the frame beyond Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) to the full point-of-sale credit ecosystem (Pay in 4 products, embedded installment loans, retail installment sales contracts, and private label retail cards), explaining why litigation risk turns less on how a product is marketed and more on what the consumer saw, what they were told, and what happened when something went wrong after checkout.
In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host Chris Willis is joined by colleague Kim Phan to break down the proposed regulations recently released by the Colorado attorney general (AG) under the Automated Decision-Making Technology (ADMT) Act, Colorado’s newly amended AI statute, and explain why the financial services industry needs to engage before these rules are finalized.
In this crossover edition of Moving the Metal: The Auto Finance Podcast and The Consumer Finance Podcast, hosts Brooke Conkle, Chris Capurso, and Chris Willis break down the FTC’s policy statement abandoning disparate impact enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act. The group traces the reversal to two key drivers — a reassessment of the FTC’s statutory authority and President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to deprioritize disparate impact liability — while placing the move in the broader context of similar rollbacks at the CFPB and federal banking regulators. They also examine what remaining exposure looks like at the state level, particularly in New York and New Jersey, and close with a clear message for compliance officers: fair lending is far from dead, the current federal retreat is best understood as a vacation rather than a permanent reprieve, and paying close attention to regulatory signals now can be a meaningful competitive advantage down the road.
In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host Chris Willis is joined by colleagues Stefanie Jackman and Brian Hays to discuss the Seventh Circuit’s landmark July 2026 ruling in Steidinger v. Blackstone Medical Services, a unanimous decision holding that text messages do not qualify as “telephone calls” under § 227(c)(5) of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), eliminating a private right of action for National Do Not Call Registry violations based solely on text message communications.
In this crossover episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast and Moving the Metal, Jason Cover is joined by colleagues Brooke Conkle and Chris Capurso from Troutman Pepper Locke’s Consumer Financial Services practice to tackle a topic that has been notably absent from the point-of-sale finance series until now — auto finance. As the largest point-of-sale purchase most consumers will ever make, auto finance comes with a distinct set of structural, regulatory, and litigation risks that set it apart from other point-of-sale products like home improvement or medical financing. The conversation begins with the structural mechanics of retail installment sales contracts, explaining why auto finance is dominated by dealer-originated paper assigned to finance companies rather than direct lending, and what that means for compliance and liability. Chris walks through the complexities of vehicle titling and lien perfection across a 50-state patchwork of DMV laws — including the added wrinkles that arise in the refinance context — while Brooke unpacks the litigation risks that follow when those processes go wrong, from repossession claims and bankruptcy lien avoidance to class actions rooted in the FTC Holder Rule. The episode also covers evergreen underwriting and origination risks including ECOA adverse action obligations, yo-yo financing claims, and add-on product exposure, as well as the FTC’s recent price advertising guidance and how state attorneys general are stepping into the enforcement void left by federal regulators. The episode closes with practical advice for point-of-sale finance companies considering entering the auto space.
In this episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, host Chris Willis sits down with Partners Joseph DeFazio and Joseph Froehlich to discuss the New Jersey Supreme Court’s ruling in Diana, a unanimous ruling and long-awaited victory for debt buyers operating in New Jersey. At the center of the conversation is a high-volume litigation campaign waged by the Kim Law Firm, which targeted the chain of title for consumer debts under the New Jersey Consumer Finance Licensing Act (NJCFLA). Kim’s core theory argued that any consumer debt under $50,000 — including personal loans, auto loans, and retail credit — that was ever touched, transferred, or assigned by an unlicensed entity is void and unenforceable as a matter of law, and that any attempt to collect on such a debt independently triggers statutory liability.
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 solo episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast, Chris Willis, co-leader of Troutman Pepper Locke’s Consumer Financial Services Regulatory practice, walks through the recent wave of federal regulatory guidance addressing the role of immigration status in consumer lending and explains why the practical impact on lenders may be far more limited than the public discourse suggests. Chris breaks down what each piece of guidance says, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s reminder that Regulation B permits immigration status considerations in ability-to-repay analyses for mortgages and credit cards, and the banking regulators’ safety and soundness and concentration risk warnings. He also addresses the competing litigation risks that complicate a simple return to restrictive eligibility policies. He then turns to the critical practical question: what, if anything, should lenders actually do?