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Melanie Brody is a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office and a member of the Consumer Financial Services group. She concentrates her practice on federal and state government enforcement matters, primarily for banks, mortgage lenders, auto lenders, credit card issuers, student lenders and other financial service providers. She represents clients in investigations, examinations and enforcement actions by the US Department of Justice, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve Board, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Trade Commission, state banking regulators and state attorneys general.

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On August 19, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a proposed rule for the purpose of aligning HUD’s 2013 Disparate Impact Rule with the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities. HUD sought comments from relevant stakeholders and the public on the

Redlining is back in the news.  Last week, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that it approved a settlement resolving redlining claims brought by the California Reinvestment Coalition against a California-based depository institution.

Unlike DOJ’s June redlining settlement with First Merchants Bank, which we wrote about here, this new case was not

Last month, in the first redlining matter initiated and settled under the Trump Administration, the United States Department of Justice settled redlining claims against First Merchants Bank, an Indiana-based bank regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”). The First Merchants settlement contains useful insights for institutions seeking to evaluate redlining risk.

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Holly Spencer Bunting, a partner in Mayer Brown’s Financial Services Regulatory and Enforcement (FSRE) group will be honored tonight by the Women in Housing and Finance (WHF) as a 40 Under 40 honoree.

WHF is a Washington, DC-based premier, nonpartisan association that focuses on promoting women professionals in the fields of housing and financial

On February 22, the Third Circuit sidestepped the Supreme Court’s 2017 holding in Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc. and found that a purchaser of defaulted debt qualified as a debt collector under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

In Barbato v. Greystone Alliance, the Third Circuit considered whether an entity that purchased charged off receivables and outsourced the actual collection activity was subject to the FDCPA.  In analyzing the issue, the court explained that the FDCPA’s definition of the term debt collector has two prongs, and if an entity satisfies either of them, it is a debt collector subject to the Act.  Under the “principal purpose” prong, a debt collector includes any person who “uses any instrumentality of interstate commerce or the mails in any business the principal purpose of is the collection of any debts.”  Under the “regularly collects” prong, a debt collector includes any person who “regularly collects or attempts to collect, directly or indirectly, debts owed or due or asserted to be owed or due another.”

The defendant in Barbato, Crown Asset Management, purchased defaulted debt and outsourced the collection function to a third party.  After being sued for allegedly violating the FDCPA, Crown argued (among other things) that under the Supreme Court’s decision in Henson, the Act did not apply to it because Crown owned the debts and thus did not regularly seek to collect debts owed to another.  In response to this argument, the Third Circuit explained that while Henson clarified the scope of the “regularly collects” definition, the Supreme Court “went out of its way in Henson to say that it was not opining on whether debt buyers could also qualify as debt collectors under [the principal purpose prong].”
Continue Reading Third Circuit Holds that Debt Purchasers Can Qualify as Debt Collectors

Possibly hinting toward a revival of fair lending enforcement following a recent lull, the OCC’s Ombudsman recently declined a bank’s appeal of the OCC’s decision to refer the bank to both DOJ and HUD for potential Fair Housing Act violations.

The OCC’s Ombudsman oversees an infrequently used program for banks that desire to appeal agency

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently proposed amendments to its earlier policy for issuing no-action letters, and proposed a process for participating in a so-called regulatory “sandbox,” which would provide certainty in or exemptions from complying with certain federal consumer protection laws. Comments on the proposals are due by February 19, 2019.

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Federal redlining enforcement has waned in recent years, but redlining risk has not disappeared.  On October 4, two consumer advocacy groups, the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, filed a law suit accusing a Connecticut-based bank of unlawful discrimination against minority homebuyers. The suit alleges that Liberty Bank, a state-chartered bank

The Summer 2018 edition of Supervisory Highlights –the first one the BCFP has issued under Mick Mulvaney’s leadership – is much the same as previous editions. In it, the Bureau describes recent supervisory observations in various industries, and summarizes recent public enforcement actions as well as supervision program developments.

One aspect of the report that is notably different, however, is the introductory language. In prior regular editions of Supervisory Highlights, the report’s introduction would emphasize the corrective action that the Bureau had required of supervised institutions. It would highlight the amount of total restitution to consumers and the number of consumers affected by supervisory activities, and would note the millions of dollars imposed in civil money penalties.

This new version eliminates all of that discussion from the introduction. Instead, the Bureau has added language emphasizing that “institutions are subject only to the requirements of relevant laws and regulations” and that the purpose of disseminating these Supervisory Highlights is to “help institutions better understand how the Bureau examines institutions” to help industry limit risks to consumers.

The first sentence of the report, which in previous iterations used to say that the Bureau is “committed to a consumer financial marketplace that is fair, transparent, and competitive, and that works for all consumers” now says the Bureau is committed to a marketplace that is “free, innovative, competitive, and transparent, where the rights of all parties are protected by the rule of law, and where consumers are free to choose the products and services that best fit their individual needs.”

Ultimately, time will tell whether this is simply rhetoric or if the Bureau’s supervisory and enforcement posture will be dramatically different from that under Mulvaney’s predecessor.
Continue Reading BCFP’s Latest Supervisory Highlights

On September 5, 2018, a coalition of 14 state attorneys general, led by North Carolina’s attorney general, Josh Stein, wrote to Acting BCFP Director Mick Mulvaney to express “grave concerns” that the BCFP may seek to abandon the federal government’s longstanding position that ECOA provides for disparate impact liability. A copy of the letter can