The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is being sued over its recent decision to begin accepting non-bank charter applications from fintech companies. The lawsuit is the second brought by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) regarding the OCC’s stance on fintech charters and coincides with the renewal of a similar legal challenge previously brought by a coalition of state bank regulators.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s freshly minted Office of Innovation has a proposed a rule to establish a Disclosure Sandbox designed to encourage companies to engage in trial programs to improve compliance with the bureau’s existing disclosure policies.  The proposal could highlight the bureau’s stated intent to work on increasing coordination with federal and state regulators. Industry advocacy groups have called for an extension to the comment period connected to the proposal. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 17th edition of Supervisory Highlights details trends the bureau’s examiners observed at covered banks, credit unions and certain nonbanks pertaining to debt collection, mortgage servicing, payday lending, auto loan servicing, credit card account management and small business lending from December 2017 to May 2018. The latest edition is absent some noteworthy portions that have been staples of past reports, such as information about mortgage origination examinations and non-public enforcement activity. 

Alleging that they deceived consumers about the nature of certain pension-related product offerings, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit citing multiple parties for violating two consumer financial protection laws. The bureau accused the defendants of giving consumers the erroneous impression that their pension-advance products were not loans, as well as other illegal conduct.

Recognizing the negative impacts of Hurricane Florence on customers, members and business operations at covered financial institutions, the federal prudential regulatory agencies and state regulators announced their intent to provide appropriate regulatory assistance to supervised entities affected by the storm. The agencies released a statement encouraging institutions operating in the affected areas to strive to continue meeting the financial services needs of their communities.

In a move intended to better distinguish between guidance and regulation, the federal prudential regulators collectively released a clarifying statement regarding the role of guidance. The financial industry and other interested parties believe the move is a positive step given the fact that past guidance issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Richard Cordray’s leadership was deemed to have the same force and effect of a law.

Determining that its market activities did not pose significant systemic economic risk, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) announced that Zions Bank will not be treated as a designated nonbank financial company upon completion of its merger with Zions Bancorporation. In its final decision, FSOC noted arguments Zions stressed in a written submission advocating for the regulators not to subject the company to enhanced regulatory scrutiny reserved for large nonbank financial institutions, and argued that any two entities could structure a merger that subverted Section 117 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently invoked its statutory authority to penalize people or entities engaged in unfair or deceptive acts or practices, issuing consent orders against the operators of a debt collection business for using false claims and threats to collect on debts consumers did not actually owe. The defendants were charged with two counts of violating the FTC Act’s prohibition against deceptive acts and three counts of violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

An interpretive rule recently issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is intended to clarify Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) exemption changes enacted under S. 2155, addressing concerns among covered financial entities. The rule clarifies what requirements banks and credit unions must adhere to if they elect to voluntarily report exempt data fields, what loans and credit lines count toward the thresholds for partial exemptions, which Regulation C data points the partial exemptions cover and partial exemptions for negative Community Reinvestment Act examination history.