Auto Finance

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On September 16, the New York Attorney General’s Office (OAG) announced a settlement with two Westchester County dealerships, resolving allegations of deceptive fee practices under General Business Law § 349 and § 350 and Executive Law § 63(12). The resolution requires more than $1 million in immediate consumer restitution, with additional claims-based payments potentially reaching into the millions, plus $700,000 in penalties. For dealers and finance professionals, the underlying findings are worth attention; the settlement is an illustration of how regulators are analyzing fee disclosure and add-on sales in current enforcement actions.

In this episode of Moving the Metal: The Auto Finance Podcast, hosts Brooke Conkle and Chris Capurso break down California’s CARS Act, set to take effect October 1. They trace the law’s roots back to the FTC’s now-overturned CARS Rule, walk through its four core compliance pillars (misrepresentations, total price disclosures, valueless add-ons, and recordkeeping), and dig into the new three-day right to cancel for used vehicles. The hosts also cover enforcement risk under California’s UCL and CLRA, the exposure lenders face through the Holder Rule, and five practical steps dealers and their partners should be taking right now to get ahead of the law’s arrival.

The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection has issued an alert warning consumers about a growing scam in which fraudsters create near-perfect clones of legitimate car dealership websites, sometimes using AI, to trick buyers into paying upfront for vehicles that don’t exist. Victims show up at the real dealership only to find no record of their order, their payment, or their car.

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 Moving the Metal, hosts Brooke Conkle and Chris Capurso break down the FTC’s landmark policy statement officially abandoning disparate impact enforcement and what it means for dealers and auto finance companies. They cover the agency’s two core justifications — statutory authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act and ECOA, and President Trump’s executive order on meritocracy — and explain why, despite the federal reprieve, companies should not treat this as a green light to abandon fair lending compliance programs altogether. From the compliance side, Chris walks through the careful recalibration businesses should consider, while Brooke flags that pending litigation and active state-level efforts to codify disparate impact liability mean the risk landscape is far from clear. The episode closes with a preview of Part 2, where the hosts will be joined by Chris Willis to dig deeper into the history and future of fair lending law.

More than two years after filing suit, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong have secured a $4 million settlement with Manchester, Connecticut auto dealer Chase Nissan LLC, doing business as Manchester City Nissan, along with its owners and managers, resolving allegations of widespread deceptive fee practices targeting consumers in the car-buying process.

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.

On July 30, 2026, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a “lease here, pay here” dealership operating across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia agreed to pay over $137,000 to resolve allegations that it violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). The case is a useful reminder of what the SCRA actually requires from auto dealers and finance companies in leasing and repossessions, and what can go wrong when those obligations are not met.