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CFPB Outlines Fair Lending Priorities for 2017
On December 16, the Director of the Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity at the CFPB announced the Bureau’s fair lending priorities for 2017. According to Ms. Ficklin’s blog post, the CFPB will increase its efforts to prevent credit discrimination and improve credit access by focusing on redlining, mortgage and student loan servicing, and small business lending. Specifically, the Bureau will increase its focus on evaluating: (i) whether lenders are intentionally avoiding lending in minority neighborhoods; (ii) if delinquent borrowers face more difficulty in working out payment arrangements with mortgage or student loan servicers because of their race or ethnicity; and (iii) whether women-owned and minority-owned small businesses experience discrimination when applying for credit.
State AGs Urge the CFPB to Ensure that States Maintain the Right to Set Usury Caps on High Cost Loans
In October, New York AG Eric T. Schneiderman, along with seven other state AGs (Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont and the District of Columbia), submitted a letter to the CFPB in response to the agency’s proposed rule addressing payday loans, vehicle title loans, and certain high-cost installment loans. While commending the CFPB for introducing additional consumer protections, the letter urges the CFPB to integrate the following language from the preamble of the proposed rule into the body of the final rule: “The protections imposed by this proposal would operate as a floor across the country, while leaving State and local jurisdictions to adopt additional regulatory requirements (whether a usury limit or another form of protection) above that floor as they judge appropriate to protect consumers in their respective jurisdictions.” The letter explains that because the CFPB does not have the authority to set interest rates – or usury caps – for loans, it is “crucial” that states maintain their right to do so.
OCC Comptroller Curry Addresses Regulatory Concern Related to Fintech Industry; Outlines Possible Fintech Charter
On September 13, OCC Comptroller Curry delivered remarks at the Marketplace Lending Policy Summit, an inaugural event during which policy implications and regulatory concerns prevalent in the marketplace lending industry were discussed. Similar to past reports and remarks about marketplace lending, Curry expressed concern that the underwriting and business models used by the industry have yet to go through a complete credit cycle: “A less favorable credit cycle will test this business in ways it hasn’t yet experienced, and how sources of funding will hold up under stress remains to be seen.” In addition, drawing attention to the “long-term performance” issues related to marketplace lending, Curry posed the following inquiries: (i) whether new credit underwriting technologies and algorithms comply with existing laws and regulations, such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; (ii) whether existing laws, such as the Community Reinvestment Act, should be “amended radically” to ensure that consumers are sufficiently protected against nonbank lenders; (iii) whether an entirely new regulation or law is needed to “protect the public’s interest or prevent risk to the broader financial system”; and (iv) whether innovation itself should be regulated, and, if so, by which primary regulator(s). Notably, Comptroller Curry revealed that the OCC is in the process of developing a potential federal “fintech charter,” a framework that is expected to be released this fall. Comptroller Curry emphasized that, if the OCC grants limited-purpose fintech charters, institutions receiving the charters “will be held to the same strict standards of safety, soundness, and fairness that other federally chartered institutions must meet.”
CFPB Announces Staff Changes
On July 20, the CFPB announced various senior leadership changes. Chris D’Angelo will now serve as Associate Director for Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending. D’Angelo joined the CFPB in June 2011 from the U.S. Treasury Department and has held a number of roles at the CFPB, the most recent of which was senior advisor to Director Cordray. Additional leadership changes include Richard Lepley serving as the CFPB’s Principal Deputy General Counsel in the Office of the General Counsel in the Legal Division, and Nellisha Ramdass serving as the Deputy Chief Operating Officer.
NCRC Releases Fair Lending Report
On July 18, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) released a report analyzing data related to mortgage lending in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and surrounding areas. According to the report, low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and predominantly minority neighborhoods lack access to mortgage credit. The report makes various key findings, including that: (i) the racial composition of neighborhoods in St. Louis and Milwaukee is a predictor of mortgage activity, with lending allegedly greater in predominantly white populated neighborhoods than in predominantly African American neighborhoods; (ii) 70 percent of the Milwaukee Metropolitan statistical area population is white and receives 81 percent of the loans, while African Americans make up 16 percent of the population and receive four percent of the loans; and (iii) median family income of a neighborhood is the variable that best predicts home loan activity in Minneapolis. The report follows a similar analysis of alleged racial disparities in mortgage lending in Baltimore, Maryland released by NCRC last year.
CFPB Publishes Ninth Semi-Annual Report to Congress
On June 30, the CFPB published its ninth Semi-Annual Report to Congress covering supervisory and enforcement actions, rulemaking activities, newly designed consumer tools, and published reports from October 1, 2015 through March 31, 2016. The Semi-Annual Report provides an overview of relevant topics addressed in previous CFPB reports and bulletins, including monthly Consumer Complaint reports, Supervisory Highlights, and the February 2016 compliance bulletin regarding Regulation V. The report outlines, among other things, the CFPB’s (i) efforts to monitor the effectiveness of the SAFE Act; (ii) fair lending activities, including its risk-based fair lending prioritization process and recent public enforcement actions; and (iii) ongoing efforts to define larger participants in markets for consumer financial services and products which are subject to the Bureau’s supervisory authority. According to the report, the Bureau’s supervisory actions during the six month period covered in the report provided over $44 million in compensation to over 177,000 consumers, while enforcement actions in the same time period resulted in “approximately $200 million in total relief for consumers who fell victim to various violations of consumer financial protection laws, along with over $70 million in civil money penalties.”
CFPB's Summer Edition of Supervisory Highlights Discloses Issues across Various Financial Markets
On June 30, the CFPB released its twelfth edition of Supervisory Highlights providing supervisory observations from its examiners in the areas of auto origination, debt collection, mortgage origination, small-dollar lending, and fair lending. In the area of auto origination, examiners determined that one or more institutions engaged in deceptive advertising practices related to the benefits of gap coverage products and the effects of payment deferrals, and failed to implement adequate compliance management systems. In the area of debt collection, examiners found that debt sellers sold thousands of debts that were unsuitable for sale because: (i) the accounts were in bankruptcy; (ii) the debts were the product of fraud; or (iii) the accounts had been paid in full. CFPB examiners further observed violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), determining that at least one collector falsely represented to consumers that a down payment was necessary in order to establish a repayment arrangement, when no such down payment was required by the collectors’ policies and procedures. For mortgage origination, CFPB examiners focused on compliance with provisions of CFPB’s Title XIV rules, the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), as implemented by Regulation Z, and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), as implemented by Regulation X, disclosure provisions, and other applicable consumer financial laws. According to the report, CFPB examiners found that one or more institutions violated TILA by miscalculating loan financing amounts, which resulted in a negative finance charge and an amount financed that was greater than the stated loan amount. The report also highlights (i) violations of RESPA’s prohibition against improper referral arrangements; (ii) failure to implement policies and procedures and to provide sufficient training related to the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s requirement to provide consumers with notice of any adverse action, such as denial of credit; (iii) failure to properly disclose interest on interest-only loans in violation of TILA; and (iv) weak oversight of compliance management systems. In the area of small dollar lending, CFPB examiners assessed compliance with the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (Regulation E), and found that the installment loan agreements of one or more entities failed to set out an acceptable range of amounts to be debited because they contained ambiguous or undefined terms in their descriptions of the upper and lower limits of the range. Finally, regarding fair lending, the report covers violations relating to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (Regulation C) and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (Regulation B).
According to the report, the CFPB’s supervisory resolutions from January 2016 through April 2016 resulted in more than 257,000 consumers receiving approximately $24.5 million in restitution.
HUD Settles with North Carolina Commercial Lender Over Alleged Fair Lending Violations
On June 8, HUD announced a conciliation agreement with a North Carolina-chartered commercial lender to resolve allegations that, as the successor of a merger with a South Carolina-based bank, it denied mortgage loans to African American, Latino, and Asian American applicants at a disproportionately higher rate than white applicants in violation of Section 804(b) and 805 of the Federal Fair Housing Act. After conducting an analysis of mortgage loans originated by the South Carolina bank between 2010 and 2011, the Department found that the bank demonstrated preferential treatment of white mortgage loan applicants through the retail channel via manual override of its automated underwriting system. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the commercial lender, having cooperated with HUD’s investigation, must among other things, (i) provide nonprofit organizations with $140,000 to use toward credit and housing counseling, financial literacy training, and related programs for first-time homebuyers in South Carolina; (ii) spend an aggregate amount of $20,000 on positive marketing, advertising, and outreach to residents in majority-minority census tracts in South Carolina; (iii) partner with a non-profit organization or community groups involved in financial education to conduct, at a minimum, 24 financial education programs in South Carolina for individuals and small business owners; (iv) hire three mortgage banker market specialists to “focus on diverse lending in Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, Columbia, and Greenville-Anderson-Mauldin metro areas”; (v) require fair housing training for all employees and agents substantially involved in manual underwriting of mortgages; and (vi) implement “a new standardized and objective set of guidelines for a second review of retail channel residential loan applications initially denied by the automated underwriting system.”
CFPB Report Reviews 2015 Fair Lending Activities and Notes Continuing Priorities
On April 29, the CFPB released its fourth annual report to Congress on fair lending activities. The report recaps the CFPB’s 2015 supervisory and enforcement efforts around fair lending and identifies ongoing priorities in the areas of: (i) mortgage lending, noting a continuing focus on HMDA data integrity and fair lending risks related to redlining, underwriting, and pricing; (ii) indirect auto lending, noting targeted ECOA reviews in examinations; (iii) credit cards, focusing “on the quality of fair lending compliance management systems and on fair lending risks in underwriting, line assignment, and servicing”; and (iv) other product areas including small-business lending, focusing on risks in underwriting, pricing, and redlining, and offering that “current and future small business lending supervisory activity will help expand and enhance the Bureau’s knowledge in this area, including the credit process; existing data collection processes; and the nature, extent, and management of fair lending risk.” The report highlights that “supervisory work on mortgage servicing has included use of the ECOA Baseline Review Modules … to identify potential fair lending risk in mortgage servicing and inform [its] prioritization of mortgage servicers.” In addition to recaps of its 2015 rulemaking, published guidance and efforts at interagency cooperation (including its MOU and sharing of customer complaints with HUD), the report also indicates that the CFPB had a number of authorized enforcement actions in settlement negotiations or pending investigations at year end in areas including mortgage lending, indirect auto lending, and credit cards.
CFPB's Jeffrey Langer Lends Perspective on Marketplace Lending
On April 12, CFPB Assistant Director for Installment Lending and Collections Markets Jeffrey Langer delivered remarks at the San Francisco LendIt USA Conference on the marketplace lending industry. Langer began his remarks by summarizing the CFPB’s Project Catalyst initiative, which was designed to support and encourage consumer-friendly innovation pertaining to financial products and services, such as marketplace lending. Langer, referencing the CFPB’s recently released consumer bulletin on online marketplace lending, commented that marketplace lending is a “young” industry with both potential benefits and potential risks. For example, Langer explained that marketplace lenders may be able to offer consumers faster and more convenient methods of obtaining credit, and may also have fewer overhead costs to pass along to consumers as compared to brick-and-mortar institutions. However, Langer also expressed concerns about the industry’s agility in changing markets, opining that, “[i]t is unclear whether marketplace lenders’ have adequate loan servicing infrastructure or the ability to scale infrastructure quickly and effectively in the event of [an economic] downturn.” According to Langer, “it is simply too soon to know whether marketplace lending will be able to realize its potential as a means of delivering credit at a lower cost to consumers (and small businesses) who have the ability to repay the loans they obtain or whether the marketplace lending business model will prove unable to sustain itself through a full business cycle.” Langer additionally noted that marketplace lenders could face fair lending risk as a result of introducing new types of data and/or analytics in making credit decisions.