Covid-19 Publications
"CFPB order offers insight into pandemic mortgage servicing" by Jeffrey P. Naimon and H Joshua Kotin (Law360)
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in December issued a consent order based on alleged violations of its 2014 mortgage servicing regulations. The consent order, which also bootstraps claims of unfairness and deception to alleged technical violations of the servicing regulations —...
ArticlesSpecial Alert: CFPB redefines Qualified Mortgage; “GSE Patch” to expire
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week released two final rules further defining what types of loans can be a “qualified mortgage loan” for purposes of the bureau’s Ability-to-Repay/Qualified Mortgage Rule (ATR/QM Rule). The General QM Final Rule substantially revamps the general rules...
Special Alerts"Square peg meets round hole: Regulatory responses to challenges created by innovation in banking" by Jonice Gray Tucker, Kari K. Hall, Brendan Clegg, and Anthony Carral (The Business Lawyer)
During the past decade, an underlying tension between the financial sector’s embrace of innovative products and services and the regulatory framework that governs the industry surfaced—and that tension has since become even more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing pressure from customers’...
Articles"Fairness gone viral: Fair lending considerations for financial institutions amid Covid-19" by Jonice Gray Tucker and Caroline M. Stapleton (American Bar Association Business Law Today)
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on certain protected classes in the United States, including, in particular, minority populations. Non-white populations have seen higher hospitalization rates, more deaths, and higher unemployment numbers over the past six months as compared...
Articles"Force majeure in the Covid era – What now?" by Elizabeth E. McGinn, Ryan S. Pollard, and Anthony Carral (Sports Litigation Alert)
The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted all aspects of the global economy, and sports is among the many industries that moved quickly to minimize the disruption. Very early on, members of the sports industry scrambled to analyze their force majeure clauses as customers, vendors, and key...
Articles"Relief or risk?: The hidden costs of government lending" by Michelle L. Rogers, Katherine L. Halliday, and Katherine Brockway Katz (National Law Journal)
There is no longer any question that the economy will take years, not months, to fully recover from COVID-19, and additional funding for government and government-backed loans seems inevitable at some point. Examining the programs from the initial COVID-19 relief package provides context for...
Articles"Reopening well: Balancing employee privacy with employee safety" by Elizabeth E. McGinn, Amanda R. Lawrence, James C. Chou, and David Rivera (Corporate Compliance Insights)
Consumer privacy has been a key area of focus over the past several years, but as companies begin return-to-work operations, they discover that employee privacy looms large as well. Well-intentioned companies seeking to keep employees safe risk incurring penalties from a variety of agencies based...
Articles"How to tackle coronavirus corruption" co-authored by Daniel R. Alonso (Foreign Policy)
Latin America as a region has long had a problem with public corruption, and the coronavirus pandemic has made things worse. As governments shovel public funds to fight the pandemic and its economic fallout, public officials are swindling millions, including in the graft-prone public health sector...
Articles"Videoconferences are weak alternatives to in-person client meetings" by Nancy H. Turner
A century ago, the Spanish Flu ravaged the globe and impacted the legal industry in ways not dissimilar to what we are seeing today. Trials could not be held as attorneys and judges contracted the virus, courts —...
Buckley Commentary & Analysis"Resisting temptation in a crisis: Making sure ethics and compliance don’t get diluted under financial strain" co-authored by Daniel R. Alonso (Compliance & Enforcement)
As the pandemic crisis begins its long process of receding, near the top of mind in companies of all sizes is how to thrive, or even survive, with the economy in turmoil. With such pressures, it would be easy for business executives to let compliance issues drop down on their list of priorities...
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