by Jeff Sovern Here. The customers in question had purchased Equifax's credit monitoring service. You know, the service it's now offering for free. Oh, and in addition to the CFPB investigation, the NY AG's investigation, and the class actions, the FTC is now investigating the security breach.
Author Archives: Jeff Sovern
by Jeff Sovern Brian posted earlier about a letter from senators on the Equifax breach. Not to be outdone, the two dozen Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have written their own letter to Equifax, raising numerous questions about the breach. Among them are queries about the Equifax's arbitration clause, security freeze, credit monitoring services, […]
by Jeff Sovern I wanted to comment on a couple of op-eds opposing the CFPB arbitration rule. One is Joseph Cioffi's piece in the American Banker, headlined CFPB arbitration rule will still pose costs to consumers. Though Cioffi (Chair of the Insolvency, Creditors’ Rights & Financial Products Practice Group at Davis & Gilbert) sees the arbitration rule as […]
by Jeff Sovern I'm still trying to make sense of the arbitration situation in connection with the Equifax breach. Here is how I see it at the moment. Comments welcome. Our story so far: after hackers invaded the Equifax database, Equifax set up a web site (that is the current version of the web site; […]
Here . Excerpt: The Equifax revelations come at exactly the wrong time for Republicans, who had been hoping as late as Thursday to rapidly push ahead next week on a vote to overturn the rule. * * * * * * The Equifax breach—and its controversial mandatory arbitration clause—could push some . . . Republicans […]
by Jeff Sovern Scott posted yesterday about the Equifax data breach, which may end up being as significant a consumer scandal as the Wells Fargo unauthorized account fiasco. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the disclosure of the Equifax announcement is extraordinary, coming on the same day Congress considered a bill to limit damages against […]
From Paul Bland in HuffPo, CFPB Rule Fight Forces Senators to Choose: Military Families or Big Banks. Excerpt: When Gary Childress of Raleigh, North Carolina learned in July 2008 that he was being deployed to Iraq as part of his Army National Guard service, one of the things he did before reporting for duty was to […]
Brian D. Feinstein a Bigelow Fellow at Chicago has written Judging Judicial Foreclosure. Here is the abstract: For the third time in the last several decades, policymakers are contemplating an overhaul of mortgage-finance regulations. Despite the considerable attention paid to how ex ante regulations affect the availability of credit and the appropriateness of the mortgage […]
by Jeff Sovern Housing Wire reports on mortgage origination costs in a report headlined MBA: The cost to produce a mortgage falls closer to historic lows, with a subhead reading "Independent mortgage bank production profitability improves." Reports like this make it difficult to justify claims that the CFPB is significantly adding to lending costs.
Stephen J. Ware of Kansas has written The Centrist Case for Enforcing Adhesive Arbitration Agreements, Forthcoming in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review. Here is the abstract: "The Politics of Arbitration Law and Centrist Proposals for Reform", 53 Harvard J. on Legislation 711 (2016), explained how issues surrounding consumer, and other adhesive, arbitration agreements became divisive along predictable political lines […]