Bloomberg reports: Payday lenders could escape tighter regulation as the Trump-led Consumer Financial Protection bureau considers eliminating a requirement that they first assess borrowers’ ability to repay loans. The CFPB is expected to either propose eliminating the rule’s strict ability to repay standards or delaying their effective date so that they can undergo further review, […]
Author Archives: Allison Zieve
The Philadelphia Tribune report on a new poll that, a decade after the financial crisis, finds that consumers still support financial regulation and related enforcement. Moreover, on payday and car-title lending, "consumer scorn has grown even stronger over the past year for these small-dollar, debt-trap loans that come with triple-digit interest rates." The full article […]
The Dodd-Frank Act prohibits “unfair, deceptive, or abusive” acts and practices by the financial companies regulated under the Act, and gives the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau authority to enforce the prohibition. The Act defines "abusive" as an act or practice that: (1) Materially interferes with the ability of a consumer to understand a term or […]
Reuters reports that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is considering sanctions against Citigroup for denying minority customers the kinds of mortgage discounts that the bank offered to many other borrowers. Citigroup, while performing a review to ensure it adhered to fair lending standards, reportedly found that some minority borrowers were not getting […]
Citing the U.S. Supreme Court's precedent in favor of arbitration, California Governor Jerry Brown yesterday vetoed a bill that would end the practice of employers requiring workers to use private arbitration instead of the courts to resolve sexual harassment complaints. The bill would not have barred workers from voluntarily opting for arbitration, only barred predispute […]
We have from time to time blogged about non-disparagement clauses inserted into consumer contracts to try to prevent consumers from complaining publicly about a product or service. Yesterday, a district court in Florida, in a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission against weight-loss supplement marketer Roca Labs, granted the FTC's summary judgment motion in a […]
Starting today, consumers who are concerned about identity theft or data breaches can freeze their credit and place one-year fraud alerts for free. The Federal Trade Commission explains, here.
American Airlines is threatening to prohibit customers from making changes to nonrefundable tickets if Congress makes good on a proposal to crack down on what critics call unreasonable airline fees. The NYT article is here.
The New York Times reports: After the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, started scaling back consumer protections for student borrowers last year, six states and the District of Columbia sped up their own efforts to crack down on abusive lending practices by companies that administer federal loan programs. Now Ms. DeVos is trying to stop them. […]
The Hill reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling on Congress to come up with a federal privacy standard in order to preempt states from passing their own laws governing data collection. The article is here.