The Next Wave of Federal Lawsuits Facing ARM Companies is Approaching

"ADA Filings Outpace TCPA Filings in 2019"

Today, a new threat faces virtually every company operating in the ARM industry.  A threat where violations occur passively, without any action or activity required on the part of the company.  A threat from consumer litigation that could conceivably result in an exponentially greater number of filings than the TCPA, and by current statistics, will likely surpass the number of TCPA filings in 2019 by a factor of 2X or more.  And, all you need to do to potentially violate the statute is launch or operate a public facing website or collection application.

Attorney General Ellison sues companies and individuals running fraudulent student loan debt “forgiveness” scheme, obtains court order immediately halting conduct

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced today that his office has joined with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and other jurisdictions in filing suit against three southern California companies and their owners and officers for running a fraudulent scheme that falsely promises borrowers student-loan forgiveness.

FTC Releases Results of 2017 Mass-Market Consumer Fraud Survey

The Federal Trade Commission has released the results of a comprehensive survey conducted in 2017 that examined the prevalence of mass-market consumer fraud, how it is perpetrated, and what factors are associated with a greater likelihood that a consumer may fall victim to fraud. The FTC conducted similar surveys in 2003, 2005, and 2011.   The survey results show that 15.9 percent of the respondents were victims of fraud in 2017, which represents approximately 40 million U.S. adults.

Agencies Announce Dollar Thresholds in Regulations Z and M for Exempt Consumer Credit and Lease Transactions

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Federal Reserve Board today announced the dollar thresholds in Regulation Z (Truth in Lending) and Regulation M (Consumer Leasing) that will apply for determining exempt consumer credit and lease transactions in 2020. These thresholds are set pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) amendments to the Truth in Lending Act and the Consumer Leasing Act that require adjusting these thresholds annually based on the annual percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W)

Consumers Get More Control Over the Banking Data Shared With Financial Apps

Financial apps such as Plaid and Intuit’s Mint help consumers with budgeting, but they may also vacuum up lots of personal data from bank accounts, which could compromise privacy and potentially lead to security risks. Banks have begun giving their customers tools to safely connect to these apps and control what data is shared. Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo have created dashboards to let customers decide what information to share, and experts say more consumers should use them. For example, you may want to provide your checking and credit card balances to a budgeting app but not the details of your mortgage.

Will the Supreme Court Decimate the CFPB? Latest Developments

Even though the Supreme Court generally moves relatively slowly, the Court’s recent decision to grant certiorari in the CFPB v. Seila Law case is forcing courts and litigants to adjust quickly. And the Supreme Court is itself taking a number of procedural steps to move the case forward. What happens next could reshape consumer financial regulation for years to come.

How Banks Can Beat Fintechs in the War for Millennials and Gen Z

The accepted wisdom among many in financial services is that younger consumers — more focused on ethics and integrity generally — are more skeptical of financial institutions, and prefer to deal with (or to work for) the most innovative companies. New research based on input from thousands of consumers around the world basically throws cold water on those two notions.

Bureau hasn’t budged on cutting payday loan protections

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not budged on its June decision cutting additional protections.   “There was insufficient evidence and legal support for these requirements,” CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger wrote in a Sep. 23 letter to Rep. Maxine Waters, D-California, who is chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee and a critic of the agency’s move.

Banks are using their Washington clout to stomp on the tech industry

Banks are using their long-established relationships on Capitol Hill and in regulatory agencies to undermine a relative newcomer struggling to get traction in Washington: the tech industry.   The battle of corporate titans is brewing as technology companies look to disrupt what Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg calls the "stagnant" financial industry by giving consumers new ways to pay for things and obtain credit.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Announces Action Against Student Loan Debt Relief Operation

Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau), along with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, North Carolina Department of Justice, and the Los Angeles City Attorney, announced an action to halt a student-loan debt-relief operation engaged in allegedly unlawful conduct and consisting of several related companies: Consumer Advocacy Center Inc., which does business as Premier Student Loan Center; True Count Staffing Inc., also known as SL Account Management; and Prime Consulting LLC, which is known as Financial Preparation Services. Defendants also include Albert Kim, Kaine Wen, and Tuong Nguyen, whom the Bureau alleges substantially assisted the student-loan debt-relief companies. The Bureau alleges that since at least 2015, the debt-relief companies operated as a common enterprise and deceived thousands of federal-student-loan borrowers and charged over $71 million in unlawful advance fees in connection with the marketing and sale of student-loan debt-relief services to consumers.  

Hackers finding ways to exploit automotive software to overtake cars

A new report from IntSights details the many ways cybercriminals break into a new generation of highly digitized cars. Over the last ten years cars have become packed full of new technology that makes it easier to play music and movies, take calls, or get directions all from your dashboard. But this digitization has come at a cost, giving cybercriminals a seemingly endless amount of access points to take over vehicles.

America’s Middle Class Is Addicted to a New Kind of Credit

The payday-loan business was in decline. Regulators were circling, storefronts were vanishing and investors were abandoning the industry’s biggest companies en masse.  And yet today, just a few years later, many of the same subprime lenders that specialized in the debt are promoting an almost equally onerous type of credit.   It’s called the online installment loan, a form of debt with much longer maturities but often the same sort of crippling, triple-digit interest rates. If the payday loan’s target audience is the nation’s poor, then the installment loan is geared to all those working-class Americans who have seen their wages stagnate and unpaid bills pile up in the years since the Great Recession.

Debt Consolidation Often Results in Higher Credit Scores and Better Credit Performance

Participation in the consumer lending market is at a record high, with more than 19.6 million consumers carrying an unsecured personal loan through the first half of 2019. Consumer adoption of personal loans for debt consolidation has driven much of this growth, as consumers with heavy credit card debt often receive offers to consolidate their debt via a personal loan. However, the increased prevalence of consolidation loans has led to the rising misconception that this practice may lead to a debt trap for consumers.

CFPB Symposium: Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) will hold a symposium on Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) on November 6, 2019 at 9:30 a.m.    The symposium is the third in a series announced earlier this year to explore consumer protections in today’s dynamic financial services marketplace. The series is aimed at stimulating a proactive and transparent dialogue to assist the Bureau in its policy development process, including possible future rulemakings. The first symposium on June 25 covered the Dodd-Frank Act’s prohibition on abusive acts or practices. The second symposium on September 19 covered behavioral law and economics.

23 Senators Demand Investigation Into Mismanagement Of Student Loan Program

Twenty-three U.S. senators are calling on the nation's top consumer protection agency to investigate a loan servicer for its role in a troubled student loan forgiveness program. The program is designed to help public service workers like teachers and police officers. The loan servicer, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, better known as FedLoan and PHEAA, is one of the entities that handles the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

SHERMETA LAW GROUP, PLLC, CERTIFIED BY THE NATIONAL WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS CORPORATION, AND THE WOMEN’S BUSINESS ENTERPRISE NATIONAL COUNCIL

Shermeta Law Group, PLLC is proud to announce national certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise, by the National Women Business Owners Corporation (NWBOC), and the Great Lakes Women’s Business Council, a regional certifying partner of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).  These prestigious certifications will provide Shermeta Law Group, PLLC access to the NWBOC and the WBENC’s Corporate Members, and be listed as an approved and qualified organization.  

Participant Views on Retirement Plan Loans Can Inform Benefit Decisions

Retirement plan participant loans most occur among the financially vulnerable, according to a study by Custodia Financial. And the number one reason for taking plan loans cited by plan participants surveyed is simply to make ends meet. This is followed by paying off credit card bills and paying for medical expenses.

Despite reputation, CFPB not toothless under new leadership

“There may be a misimpression that the CFPB is lax when, in fact, it is not; it’s a very active Bureau,” says Anthony DiResta, a partner at Holland & Knight. “They’ve been looking at many players in the financial services industry—banks, lenders, credit-repair organizations, debt collectors.”   They’re also paying attention to a broad range of consumer protection issues—from unfair and deceptive practices to failing to honor consumer requests and much more.

FDIC Consumer News: Banking at the Speed of Technology

Millions of people today use mobile devices to manage their finances, and the number of users continues to grow. Why? Mobile banking technology and services provide so much convenience. You can access your account from just about anywhere using a smartphone or mobile computer device today. As demand grows, the banking industry strives to improve online services while keeping customers’ funds safe.

Google New Ad Policy Restricts Advertisement of Debt Settlement, Debt Management and Credit Repair

In November 2019, Google will update the Financial products and services policy to restrict the advertisement of debt settlement, debt management services and credit repair services.  Ads for credit repair services will no longer be allowed to serve.  Ads for debt settlement or debt management services will be allowed to serve only if the advertiser is certified by Google. Certification will be available only in certain countries.

FCRA filings rose sharply over past decade

Lex Machina released its first “Consumer Protection Litigation Report” on October 23, 2019, and it confirms what we already know: FCRA cases increased dramatically over the past decade. From a modest 1,299 cases in 2010, FCRA cases rose steadily to a peak of 3,665 cases in 2017.  We may be seeing a plateau.  The total number of cases in 2018 topped out at 3,582.

28% of millennials only paid off their student loans thanks to help from friends and family

To pay off student-loan debt, some millennials are turning to outside help. About 20% of millennial respondents to a recent survey from Insider and Morning Consult said they've successfully paid off a student loan. Of those respondents, 28% said they've paid off debt with financial help from friends and family. The survey polled 2,096 Americans about their financial health, debt, and earnings for a new series, "The State of Our Money." More than 670 respondents were millennials, defined as ages 23 to 38 in 2019.

Uber Money Wants To Be The Bank Account For Uber Drivers

During the Middle Ages, payday was a yearly event wherein the local landlords and their peasant workers settled up for the previous year’s work and drew up terms for the next year. As industrialization displaced feudalism, pay cycles evolved to monthly. The modern era ushered in the notion of a weekly or bi-weekly pay cycle, which remains the norm for most U.S. workers today. For about half of the workforce, that system works out fine, Uber’s Head of Payments Peter Hazlehurst told Karen Webster in a recent conversation. Those workers earn enough each pay period to cover their expenses until the next payday. In the event of an unexpected financial hiccup, most have savings or access to a low-cost means of credit.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY THREATS LURK IN THESE EVERYDAY CHOICES

Individuals and businesses unknowingly expose themselves to security and privacy threats, as experts explain here. “WE CAN OPT OUT OF PROVIDING OUR INFORMATION TO CONTENT, APP, AND SOCIAL MEDIA PROVIDERS.” Ari Trachtenberg, Gianluca Stringhini, and Ran Canetti of Boston University offer some best-practices for protecting yourself and those around you.

New interactive feature shows there’s no generation gap for scams

When it comes to fraud, there’s no such thing as a generation gap. According to reports in the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel database, fraud affects every generation. But that’s only half the story. What else the reports tell us is that fraud affects every generation differently. The FTC has a new interactive tool that demonstrates those differences graphically, giving users exactly the data they ask for.

Supreme Court Review Could Undercut CFPB Enforcement

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could lose leverage in enforcement negotiations as the Supreme Court considers whether its leadership structure is unconstitutional. The CFPB has said it will be business as usual as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge to the independent agency’s single-director, whom the president can only fire for cause, rather than at will. But federal judges have already put stays on the bureau’s enforcement litigation or closed cases altogether pending a Supreme Court decision in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau— which hasn’t been scheduled for oral arguments yet.

CDIA and Metro 2 approve new special comment code for extinguished debts

Recently, the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) and the Metro 2 Taskforce approved a new Special Comment Code in FAQ 69.  According to CDIA’s press release , the new code, “DE = Debt Extinguished Under State Law,” applies—as the code suggests—to debts that have become extinguished under applicable law.

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FTC and CFPB to Host December Workshop on Accuracy in Consumer Reporting

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2019 CFPB Research Conference

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RMAi Annual Conference

Collection and Recovery Solutions 2020

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Debt Connection Symposium & Expo 2020

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