Photo of Beryl Newchurch Billings

Beryl Billings is an associate in the Banking and Financial Services Practice Group.

Beryl received her J.D. from the University of Tennessee College of Law. While in law school, she was a judicial intern for the Hon. R. David Proctor of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. She earned a B.S. in Political Science from Spring Hill College, where she was captain of the women’s soccer team and served as president of the Student Athletics Advisory Committee.

As we have repeatedly discussed this year in our Financial Services Perspectives blog, the current leadership of the CFPB has placed a significant emphasis upon fair lending. Seemingly once a month, or even more frequently at times, Director Rohit Chopra has announced a new initiative concerning fair lending and discrimination in the financial services industry.

On May 5, 2022, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (collectively the agencies) issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking (the Proposed CRA Rule) that proposes changes to the way the agencies evaluate a bank’s performance under the

On Monday, the CFPB issued a press release announcing that it will start using its authority to examine non-bank financial services institutions that the CFPB has “reasonable cause to determine pose risks to consumers.” In addition, the CFPB has released a procedural rule designed to “increase transparency of the risk-determination process” by subjecting the results

The current leadership of the CFPB has not been shy about highlighting the importance of fair lending—and it is becoming increasingly clear that fair lending and equity within the financial services industry is one of the CFPB’s greatest priorities under Director Rohit Chopra. Just last month, the CFPB released a blog post to discuss possible

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) issued a release on March 16, 2022 in order to announce changes to its supervisory operations with respect to discriminatory lending and servicing practices. 

In its press release, the CFPB explains that it has changed its approach towards examination of banks and non-banks in order to more closely “scrutinize”

In early February, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent its annual letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The letter explained the FTC’s activities related to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and Regulation B of ECOA. Pursuant to a January 2012 memorandum of understanding between the CFPB and the FTC, and consistent with

CFPB Warns of Serious Issues with Fair Lending Standards for AppraisersThe Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) released a blog post on February 4 warning of the possibility of discrimination in the appraisal process. The CFPB explained that, although appraisal discrimination based on racial inequalities has been outlawed for more than 50 years, they are still seeing reports of biased appraisers who “base their value judgments

The CFPB Director Expresses Concern About Section 1071 Regulatory Burdens on Small BanksAfter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) related to Dodd-Frank 1071, Rohit Chopra, the new CFPB director, expressed his concern regarding the regulatory burden that the proposed rule would have on small banks. Director Chopra stated that he hoped the CFPB could move towards bright-lined rules that are