In a speech last week to the Reuters Washington Summit, Director Cordray is reported to have indicated that the CFPB is committed to pursuing individuals, and not just companies, when exercising its enforcement authority. Mr....more
Six federal agencies have proposed joint standards for assessing the diversity policies and practices of regulated entities relating to employment and contracting with third parties. The proposal was developed by the...more
A proposal by the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) would substantially drive up the costs of bringing consumer debt collection actions in the state. The DFS is seeking stronger court rules for obtaining default...more
Federal regulators have issued an interagency statement intended to address industry concerns regarding the fair lending risks associated with compliance with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s...more
A subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing entitled “Examining Legislative Proposals to Reform the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” on Thursday, October 24, 2013. The hearing...more
A new California law taking effect on January 1, 2014, will require any operator of a website or online service that collects personally identifiable information on state residents to include new do-not-track disclosures in...more
A recent decision by the Arizona Court of Appeals underscores the importance of keeping consumer arbitration agreements consumer friendly. In Clark v. Renaissance West, LLC, the court affirmed the trial court’s denial of a...more
Commenting that “Alice in Wonderland has nothing on” a New York law that prohibits merchants from imposing a surcharge on credit card purchases, a New York federal court has entered a preliminary injunction that prohibits the...more
An Alabama federal court recently ruled that the limits imposed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) on the use of autodialers applied only to phone systems that had the “present capacity” to make autodialed calls...more
The New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) may take direct and indirect actions against online tribal lenders, Judge Richard Sullivan of the Southern District of New York held in a ruling last week. The decision is...more
In the latest chapter of its “comprehensive effort to prevent consumer harm in the debt-settlement industry,” the CFPB has announced the settlement of an enforcement action brought against “a leading debt-settlement payment...more
The Federal Trade Commission recently announced that it had settled a case representing its first action challenging a debt collector’s use of text messages.
In its complaint, the FTC alleged that the defendant debt...more
As industry and consumers await the results of the CFPB’s arbitration study, the FTC became the latest federal agency to weigh in on consumer arbitration issues. Recently, at the invitation of the Seventh Circuit, the FTC...more
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a report on how the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CARD Act) has affected the consumer credit card market. The report describes the...more
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a bulletin warning employers that they cannot require employees to receive their wages on payroll cards. The bulletin appears to respond to the explosive growth in the use...more
The Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), Benjamin M. Lawsky, has informed his fellow state insurance regulators in the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) that New...more
The CFPB is poised to further ramp up its oversight of the debt collection industry. According to a Bloomberg report by Carter Dougherty, Director Cordray said in an interview earlier this week that the CFPB “will be looking...more
The Federal Trade Commission recently accepted agreements containing proposed consent orders from two car dealers who were charged with deceptive advertising in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act....more
Force-placed insurance remains in the crosshairs of New York financial regulators. Last week, the state’s Department of Financial Services (DFS) sent a warning letter to all New York-licensed insurance producers about...more
Visitors to Morgan Drexen’s website can now click through to a page that allows them to see information about Morgan Drexen’s lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. against the CFPB, as well as other information intended to...more
Yesterday, the CFPB filed a lawsuit against Morgan Drexen, the company that on July 22 sued the CFPB claiming that the Bureau’s structure violates the Constitution’s separation of powers....more
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) permits a consumer to revoke consent given for autodialed or prerecorded calls to the consumer's cellular telephone number and does not limit the timing of revocation, the U.S....more
Effective October 16, 2013, all sellers and telemarketers will need a consumer's written agreement to make prerecorded telemarketing calls to residential telephone lines or autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls to...more
As part of its on-going study of consumer arbitration mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB announced on June 7, 2013 that it is seeking funding from the Office of Management and Budget to undertake a telephone survey of...more
We have previously blogged about a number of senior CFPB staff who have left the agency. Politico has reported that yet another senior staff person has left the Bureau. This time it is Sendhil Mullainathan, Assistant Director...more