In his October 27, 2012 weekly address to the Nation, President Obama praised recent efforts of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Among the highlights: “[The CFPB’s] only mission is to fight for you.” “[The CFPB] recently ordered three big credit card companies to return more than $400 million dollars to folks who were deceived or mislead . . . that’s what Wall Street Reform is all about . . .” “[Republicans in Congress] backed by an army of financial industry lobbyists, they’ve been waging an all out battle to delay, defund and dismantle these new rules.” ” . . .the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector —…
Posts published in October 2012
Last night, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its Larger Non-Bank Participant Rule. The Rule is available here. In addition to releasing the Rule, the CFPB released an examination manual and a fact sheet. Some highlights: The Rule is effective January 2, 2013 — 70 days from today. The Rule provides a description of the examination process. It does not apply to entities that originate credit. A person is subject to the Rule if they have more than $10 million in “annual receipts” resulting from consumer debt collection. “Annual receipts” is derived from a three-year average of receipts. “Annual receipts” does not include “those receipts that…
As Fall brings a chill to early morning weather, a string of federal agency enforcement actions are supplying a lot of unwanted heat for the consumer financial services industry. Today, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it has entered into a Consent Order with Equifax Information Services LLC, over charges that it had allegedly improperly sold lists of consumers who were late on their mortgage payments. The Consent Order requires Equifax to pay nearly $393,000 to the FTC. In a separate action, an Equifax customer will pay the FTC civil penalties of $1.2 million under a Consent Order concerning its alleged use of the same lists…
A City of New York regulation that sought to regulate attorneys who practiced debt collection law, was struck down Wednesday by a Federal Court sitting in the Eastern District of New York because it violated New York’s Constitutional separation of powers. In Eric Berman, P.C. v. City of New York the court found that New York City had exceeded its authority under New York law by enacting a regulation which dictated how licensed New York attorneys may provided debt collection legal services. The regulation attempted to distinguish attorneys who regularly send debt collection letters — what it described as attorneys who “regularly…