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On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of the Dodd-Frank Act law that prohibits the President from removing a CFPB Director except for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance” — the so-called “for cause” restriction (see 12 U.S.C. §5491(c)(c)).  The Court’s decision to address this restriction, which the CFPB…

On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“Bureau”) published a revised No Action Letter (“NAL”) policy aimed at offering financial innovators an avenue for obtaining more regulatory certainty before introducing new products and services. The Bureau paired its release of the revised NAL policy with an announcement of two new, related policies: one aimed at…

On Monday, July 8th, FINRA and the SEC took the unusual step of issuing a joint statement on broker-dealer custody of digital asset securities. In doing so, the Staffs of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets and of FINRA’s Office of General Counsel made clear that the SEC and FINRA will continue…

Members of the SEC’s Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology (“FinHub”) and experts in Fintech came together on May 31st for the SEC’s public forum focusing on distributed ledger technology and digital assets.  As a whole, the panelists grappled with the challenge of regulating an emerging technology that does not fit neatly within…

On May 2, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) motion to dismiss a complaint brought against it by the Maria T. Vullo, superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS).  The complaint had challenged the OCC’s…

Update: On July 23, 2020, the New York Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) filed its appellate brief asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the lower court’s decision to block the Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s (“OCC”)’s special purpose national bank charter (“fintech charter”). Please see our July 28 post for more…

On September 30, 2018, California enacted the nation’s first small business truth-in-lending law when Governor Jerry Brown signed into law SB 1235. The law aims to protect small businesses from predatory lending practices by requiring increased transparency of certain business-purpose loans marketed to small businesses.

SB 1235 draws comparisons to the federal Truth in…

In the latest sign of regulatory scrutiny of asset-advance companies offering consumers what regulators believe are in fact regulated “credit” under federal law and “loans” under state law, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP) filed its first new lawsuit under Acting Director Mulvaney last Thursday. The complaint, filed in the Central District of California,…

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued its “Nonbank Financials, Fintech, and Innovation” Report, the fourth in a series of reports outlining the Trump administration’s financial regulatory agenda.  In the report, Treasury presents a new approach to regulation designed to promote “critical” innovation in fintech. The report outlines four broad areas of…

Earlier this week, Acting Director Mulvaney announced the creation of a new “Office of Financial Innovation,” and appointed Paul Watkins, an official who led the Arizona Attorney General’s fintech initiatives, to lead the Office.  The new Office, which will now do the work formerly done under the Bureau’s Project Catalyst, “will focus on creating policies…