On July 11, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued its highly anticipated decision in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Townstone Financial, Inc., et al. In this pivotal decision, the Seventh Circuit reversed a prior ruling from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and held
On October 12, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a joint statement emphasizing the risk associated with considering an applicant’s immigration status when making credit decisions. Specifically, the CFPB and DOJ emphasized that creditors should carefully consider how they use immigration status when accepting and evaluating applications and should
On September 19, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued Circular 2023-03, which provides guidance as to how lenders must explain denials of applications of credit when the underwriting is based on artificial intelligence (AI) or complex credit models. The upshot of the guidance is that a lender that denies an application for credit
The FTC issued a release on October 18, 2022, to announce that it has initiated an enforcement action in Maryland against a Washington, D.C.-area auto dealer group, Passport Automotive Group, as well as two of its executives, Everett Hellmuth and Jay Klein. In the same release, the FTC announced that Passport, Hellmuth, and Klein have
Two recent announcements by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) will push the mortgage servicing industry to increase its collection and maintenance of consumer demographic and language preference data.
On May 3, 2022, the FHFA announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs) will require lenders submitting loans to the GSEs to use
On July 27, 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Trident Mortgage Company LP for alleged discrimination against minority families in the greater Philadelphia area.
According to the CFPB’s press release
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
Until last month, government enforcement and regulatory scrutiny of fraud and other misconduct relating to COVID-19 relief programs was generally limited to end recipients of the relief. These efforts have mostly been directed to fraud in connection with the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a nearly $1 trillion business loan program administered by the Small Business
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