The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission are teaming up to fight “dark patterns” and “negative option” subscription charges. The regulators are concerned about deceptive practices that mislead people into subscriptions or other recurring payments for products and services they do not want. In a “circular” released this week, the CFPB described […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
by Jeff Sovern As Allison posted on Wednesday, the CFPB has proposed a rule obliging nonbanks that it supervises to register the contractual standard terms they use that waive or limit consumer rights. The Bureau would then make the terms public. I think this is a great idea for several reasons. We all know that […]
After taking his sweet time to do so, my old and good friend Rich Cleland retired from the FTC at the end of 2022. I first met Rich about 40 years ago, when he ran the great Iowa AG Tom Miller’s Consumer Protection Division and I was working for the late great Texas AG Jim […]
Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule to establish a public registry of supervised nonbanks’ terms and conditions in “take it or leave it” form contracts that claim to waive or limit consumer rights and protections, like bankruptcy rights, liability amounts, or complaint rights. In some cases, terms and conditions in non-negotiable form […]
On Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget issued the Fall 2022 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. The Unified Agenda lists the regulations that each of the federal agencies are currently planning to work on. Among many other topics, the rules in progress include a Federal Trade Commission rule on children’s online privacy […]
In late December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report covering the financial health of American households. Here is the report summary: In 2022, consumer financial health continued to be buoyed by pandemic relief, high employment, and increased savings accumulated during the first year of the pandemic. But financial health was no longer as […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today ordered Wells Fargo Bank to pay more than $2 billion in redress to consumers and a $1.7 billion civil penalty for legal violations across several of its largest product lines. The bank’s illegal conduct led to billions of dollars in financial harm to its customers and, for thousands of […]
The Center for Responsible Lending reports: “New data from the bipartisan polling team Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consultingi shows that voters across the political spectrum overwhelmingly support the ongoing mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to regulate the financial industry and protect consumers. The new findings are consistent with over 10 […]
Here. Behind a paywall, but also available on Lexis. Excerpt: * * *The Fifth Circuit is claiming the CFPB wields broader regulatory authority than the Fed, a full-fledged bank regulator that engages in rulemaking and enforcement, operates the payment systems that are the backbone of the economy, and regulates monetary policy and employment. This is […]
by Jeff Sovern Here, in the NY Daily News. My latest op-ed. Excerpt: You might not expect that in the year 2022, businesses would go to court asserting a right to discriminate. Yet that is essentially what the Chamber of Commerce and various banking groups did last month when they sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The […]