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CRS report raises privacy concerns regarding digital wallets
On April 18, the Congressional Research Service released an overview of digital wallet technology and related cybersecurity, data privacy and consumer protection policy considerations. Digital wallets are software applications that store payment or account details to facilitate traditional payments using bank and credit card details, and also cover transfers from consumers’ bank accounts to retailers and peer-to-peer and cryptocurrency transactions. One issue the report identified is that companies that offer digital wallets and payment companies often collect information about users and may share data with affiliates and nonaffiliates unless users opt out. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the CFPB is developing proposed rulemaking around sharing consumer financial data, but it remains unclear whether the rules would apply to digital wallet companies. The report also stressed that because funds stored on digital wallets are not deposits, digital wallets are generally not covered by deposit insurance. And while credit, debit, or prepaid cards stored on a mobile wallet are covered by the EFTA and TILA (and implementing Regulations E and Z), those statutes do not currently cover cryptocurrency wallets. The report explained that “[c]ryptocurrency transactions are not subject to Regulation E primarily because these are not bank products and also because cryptocurrencies are not typically used for consumer payments.”
CFPB, New York sue remittance provider
On April 21, the CFPB and New York attorney general filed a complaint against a remittance provider (defendant) for allegedly violating the Electronic Funds Transfer Act and its implementing Regulation E and the Remittance Rule (the Rule) and the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), among various consumer financial protection laws. The Bureau’s announcement called the defendant a “repeat offender” citing that in 2018, the FTC filed a motion for compensatory relief and modified order for permanent injunction against the defendant, which alleged that it failed to adopt and implement a comprehensive fraud prevention program mandated by the 2009 order (covered by InfoBytes here). The CFPB complaint alleges that from October 2018 through 2022, the defendant: (i) violated the Remittance Rule requirements by repeatedly failing “to provide fund availability dates that were accurate, when the Rule required such accuracy”; (ii) “repeatedly ignored the Rule’s error-resolution requirements when addressing notices of error from consumers in New York, including in this district, and elsewhere;” and (iii) failed to establish policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with money-transferring laws, in violation of Regulation E. The complaint further noted that the defendant’s “own assessments of consumers’ complaints showed that the dates Defendants disclosed to consumers, repeatedly, were wrong,” and that the defendant “found multiple delays in making funds available to designated recipients, including delays that constituted errors under the Rule,” among other things. Finally, the Bureau claims that the defendant violated the CFPA “by failing to make remittance transfers timely available to designated recipients or to make refunds timely available to senders.” The Bureau’s complaint seeks consumer restitution, disgorgement, injunctive relief, and civil money penalties. According to a statement released by CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, "the remittance market is ripe for reinvention, and the CFPB will be examining ways to increase competition and innovation for the benefit of both families and honest businesses, while also avoiding creating a new set of harms."
CFPB releases medical debt report
On April 20, the CFPB released a report analyzing complaints submitted to the Bureau in 2021 regarding medical billing, collection, and consumer reporting practices. The report describes the difficulties that consumers face in identifying, verifying, or eliminating the debt. The report also noted that most of the complaints could be sorted into two main themes: (1) the debt was already paid, does not belong to the consumer in question, or is otherwise incorrect, and (2) that information included in collection notices raised concerns. According to the Bureau, key findings of the report include, among other things: (i) from 2018 to 2021, complaints regarding collection attempts on medical bills that were not owed increased by 31 percent; (ii) approximately 15 percent of debt collection complaints in 2021 were about attempts to collect a medical bill; and (iii) “consumers often expressed surprise and frustration about finding out about old or small medical debts when checking their credit report.” The report is the most recent among statements and reports from the CFPB regarding medical debts and credit reporting. As previously covered by InfoBytes, in March the CFPB released a report, Medical Debt Burden in the United States, that cited research finding that $88 billion in medical debt on consumer credit reports, accounting for 58 percent of all uncollected debt tradelines reported to credit reporting agencies.
Hsu discusses expanding minority homeownership
On April 19, acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael J. Hsu delivered remarks before the Black Homeownership Collaborative’s Fair Housing Month Virtual Forum. In his remarks, Hsu described initiatives to expand fair access and homeownership opportunities for minorities, low- and moderate-income areas, and communities of color. Regarding home valuations, Hsu quoted a PAVE Program report (covered by InfoBytes here) that cited research finding that “12.5 percent of appraisals for home purchases in majority-Black neighborhoods and 15.4 percent in majority-Latino neighborhoods resulted in a value below the contract price—or what a buyer was willing to pay—compared with only 7.4 percent of appraisals in predominantly White neighborhoods.” Second, Hsu mentioned the OCC’s Project REACh (covered by InfoBytes here), which was launched in 2020 and promotes greater access to capital and credit for minority and underserved populations. Hsu compared Project REACh and the Black Homeownership Collaborative by claiming they both “recognize[] that there is power in bringing a range of stakeholders together to collaborate and solve problems.” Finally, Hsu noted that the federal banking agencies are modernizing and strengthening the CRA regulations to expand financial access and inclusion to low- and moderate-income communities, and noted that he expects an interagency CRA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to come soon.
Education Dept. rolls out new plan for IDRs
On April 19, the Department of Education announced additional changes to the federal student loan program designed to reduce or eliminate federal student loan debt for many borrowers. In particular:
- To address long-term forbearance steering, Federal Student Aid (FSA) will conduct “a one-time account adjustment that will count forbearances of more than 12 months consecutive and more than 36 months cumulative toward forgiveness” under the income-driven repayment (IDR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) programs.
- Borrowers “steered” into shorter-term forbearances may file a complaint with the FSA Ombudsman to seek an account review.
- FSA will also partner with the CFPB to conduct regular audits of servicers’ forbearance use, and will seek to improve oversight of loan servicing activities.
- Loan servicers’ ability to enroll borrowers in forbearance by text or email will be restricted.
- FSA will conduct a one-time revision of IDR-qualifying payments for all Direct Student Loans and federally-managed Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL) loans, and will count any month in which a borrower made a payment toward IDR, regardless of the payment plan. Borrowers who meet the required number of payments for IDR forgiveness based on the one-time revision will receive automatic loan cancellation. Moreover, months spent in deferment prior to 2013 will count towards IRD forgiveness (with the exception of in-school deferment) to address certain data reliability issues.
In addition, FSA plans to reform its IDR tracking process. New guidance will be issued to student loan servicers to ensure accurate and uniform payment counting practices. FSA will also track payment counts on its own systems and will display IDR payment counts on StudentAid.gov beginning in 2023 so borrowers can monitor their progress. The Department also plans to issue rulemaking that will revise the terms of IDR and “further simplify payment counting by allowing more loan statuses to count toward IDR forgiveness, including certain types of deferments and forbearances.”
CFPB reports on rural banking deserts
On April 19, the CFPB released a report regarding the challenges faced by Americans in rural communities. According to the report, in 2012, over 600 counties “had no other physical banking offices except those operated by community banks.” The report also noted that bank consolidation has contributed to the expansion of “rural banking deserts,” which the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis defines as “census tracts in which there are no branches within a 10-mile radius from the tracts’ centers.” The CFPB report identified lack of broadband access and lower access to smartphones as limiting factors to banking access. It also provided a snapshot of economic challenges facing rural people and communities, including: (i) rural communities have lower incomes and higher poverty rates than the rest of the country; (ii) lower likelihood of having a credit record; and (iii) nearly 1-in-5 U.S. households have past-due medical bills.
District Court lowers punitive damages award in FCRA dispute
On April 8, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied in part and granted in part a defendant’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and alternative motion for a new trial, after concluding that the debt collector violated the FCRA by incorrectly reporting medical debts on the plaintiff’s credit reports despite allegedly receiving 31 separate disputes challenging the validity of the debt. The plaintiff contended that the medical debts in question belonged to his father, and that due to the inaccurate reporting, he was denied credit by two lenders. At trial, after finding that the defendant failed to conduct a reasonable investigation into the plaintiff’s FCRA disputes as required by the statute, a jury awarded the plaintiff $80,000 in actual damages and $700,000 in punitive damages for willful violations. The defendant challenged the award and requested a new trial, arguing that the court improperly admitted hearsay testimony, that the plaintiff failed to prove he suffered emotional damage, and that the jury’s punitive damages award was too high.
The court denied defendant’s request for a new trial, finding that the plaintiff suffered emotional damages and that the “verdict could be supported ‘without considering the challenged testimony.’” With respect to the amount of punitive damages awarded, the court concluded that the defendant’s actions were “highly reprehensible” and “callous” in the way it processed consumers’ disputes. However, in comparing the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages in other cases, the court determined that $700,000 was too high based on the actual damages award and lowered the punitive damages to $475,000 to be consistent with Eleventh Circuit law. The court concluded, “to be sure, the high punitive damages award likely reflects the jury’s assessment of Defendant’s callous behavior throughout the eighteen months of processing Plaintiff’s approximately thirty disputes, and Defendant’s employees’ testimony which confirmed that such treatment would likely repeatedly occur with countless other consumers,” adding that “given the size of [the defendant], and the number of disputes handled annually, it is not surprising that the jury deemed a high punitive damages award necessary to send the Defendant a deterrence message.”
Senators warn CFPB of student loan servicers’ mismanagement of IDR programs
On April 14, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter to CFPB Director Rohit Chopra urging the Bureau to investigate recent reports of student loan servicers mismanaging income-driven repayment (IDR) programs. The letter alleged that servicers have failed to properly count qualifying payments or accurately track borrowers’ progress towards cancellation. Specifically, the senators noted that servicers’ mismanagement is affecting the lowest-income borrowers the most, citing report findings that 48 percent of IDR borrowers are eligible for $0 monthly payments that can be counted towards loan forgiveness, but are not being tracked. In addition, IDR cancellation requires servicers to “proactively notify borrowers when they are within six months of qualifying for loan cancellation”—a process that requires servicers to accurately count payments and properly track borrowers’ progress. According to the senators, “out of 4.4 million eligible borrowers, recent reports indicate that only 32 borrowers have ever had their student loans canceled through IDR.”
District Court grants final approval in usury class action settlement
On August 16, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted final approval of a class action settlement resolving a purported scheme to unlawfully use tribe-owned firms to make online short-term loans and charge triple-digit interest rates. According to the memorandum of law in support of plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary approval of class action settlement and the stipulation and agreement of settlement, the district court previously approved two class settlements related to the lending enterprise. The first resulted in the purported lender and others: (i) repaying over $53 million dollars in cash; and (ii) forgiving over $380 million dollars of debt owed by consumers who took out loans with three lending companies. However, these settlements did not resolve every claim surrounding the purported scheme, and did not resolve claims with the settling defendant. The plaintiffs claimed that the settling defendant assisted the purported lender’s operations despite a corporate spinoff in May 2014, alleging that “[b]ecause many [of the purported lender’s] employees with institutional knowledge of and involvement in the company’s rent-a-tribe lending business were quickly transferred to [the settling defendant], [the purported lender] required and depended on continued involvement by [the settling defendant] and its employees in operating its rent-a-tribe lending business, which involvement was freely and often provided.” Under the terms of the preliminarily approved settlement, the settling defendant must provide monetary relief to class members totaling approximately $45 million.
HUD offers 40-year mortgage modification
On April 18, HUD issued Mortgagee Letter 2022-07, which establishes a 40-year loan modification as part of the Covid-19 Recovery Loss Mitigation Options. According to HUD, the new option is “designed to help those borrowers who cannot achieve a minimum targeted 25 percent reduction in the Principal and Interest portion of their mortgage payment through FHA’s existing 30-year mortgage modification with a partial claim.” Mortgage servicers may start implementing the new 40-year modification with partial claim option immediately; however, servicers must offer this solution to eligible borrowers with FHA-insured Title II forward mortgages, except those funded through Mortgage Revenue Bonds under certain circumstances, within 90 calendar days. As previously covered by InfoBytes, HUD published a proposed rule to increase the maximum term limit allowable on loan modifications for FHA-insured mortgages from 360 to 480 months. Comments are due by May 31.