by Jeff Sovern Yesterday the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on consumer data security. The Hill covered it, in a report headlined Senators bear down on credit reporting industry over data security. Here is an excerpt: “If they lose my data as Equifax did, or if someone submits to them data that is an error […]
We received the following announcement: ABA Section of Antitrust Law Consumer Protection Committee Volunteer Opportunities for Law Students The Consumer Protection Committee is the ABA’s premier group for developments in the law of privacyand data security, false advertising, deceptive marketing, and unfair trade practices, providing timelyupdates on law enforcement, rulemakings, and business guidance from the FTC, […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's student-loan ombudsman has issued his annual report. It finds that while the agency has made progress in making the student-loan repayment process fairness, serious problems remain. [C]omplaints by student loan borrowers have driven actions that have produced more than $750 million in relief for student loan borrowers and strengthened the student loan […]
The Washington Post reports that the Federal Trade and 12 state attorneys general have formed a task force to crack down on student debt relief scams. "The federal-state initiative, dubbed Operation Game of Loans, is responsible for five cases against companies, such as Student Debt Doctor and American Student Loan Consolidators, accused of misleading borrowers about their ability to lower […]
I don't post every article about the Consumer Financial Protection bureau rule barring financial services companies from using forced arbitration provisions to impose class-action bans on consumers. But I wanted to pass along this one by CFPB director Richard Cordray responding very directly to a couple of the rule's opponents.
That's a topic of this article by C. Ryan Barber (possibly behind a paywall). That the CFPB enforcement chief is quitting didn't itself strike me as critical news, but the article provided a nice overview of the main issues facing the agency.
Petra Persson of Stanford University; Research Institute of Industrial Economics has written Attention Manipulation and Information Overload. Here is the abstract: Limits on consumer attention give firms incentives to manipulate prospective buyers' allocation of attention. This paper models such attention manipulation and shows that it limits the ability of disclosure regulation to improve consumer welfare. Competitive […]
by Jeff Sovern The WSJ article is here. Excerpt: Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina introduced a bill to require the three major credit firms—Equifax, Experian PLC and TransUnion—to submit to regular federal cybersecurity reviews for the first time. All three companies also would have to phase out their use of Social Security numbers to verify consumers’ […]
by Jeff Sovern The Wall Street Journal, in a story headlined Regulator Fight Flares Anew Over Arbitration Rule As GOP Gears Up To Vote, reports on the CFPB response to the Norieka op-ed I wrote about earlier: The CFPB countered Mr. Noreika’s attack by publishing a new report on the rule’s effect on consumers, arguing there […]
by Jeff Sovern Acting Comptroller of the Currency and former bank lawyer Keith Norieka has an op-ed in The Hill, Senate should vacate the harmful consumer banking arbitration rule, that is seriously flawed. I'm going to write about two of those flaws here. First, Norieka concludes by writing: Instead of mandating only one way to resolve […]