Top Story Compliance Related

Title LXXV of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015 (Public Law 114-94), enacted on December 4, amended Section 503 of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) to create an exception to the annual privacy notice requirement for financial institutions. Institutions that don't share nonpublic personal information in any way that requires an opt-in under Regulation P, and haven't changed their policies and practices for disclosing nonpublic personal information from those most recently disclosed will no longer be required to provide an annual disclosure.We can expect a Bureau amendment to Regulation P to implement the change in the law, and we will report it when it happens, but the law behind Regulation P no longer requires those annual mailings.

The CFPB has announced the filing of a federal complaint against EOS CCA (EOS), a Massachusetts debt collection firm, for reporting and collecting on old cellphone debt that consumers disputed and EOS did not verify. The company also provided inaccurate information to credit reporting companies about the debt and failed to correct reported information that it had determined was inaccurate. The CFPB also filed a proposed consent order that, if entered by the court, would require EOS to overhaul its debt collection practices, refund at least $743,000 to consumers, and pay a $1.85 million civil money penalty.

The FDIC's FIL-59-2015, issued Friday, announces the revision of the agency's Compliance Examination Manual to reflect recent supervisory guidance. The manual provides guidance to FDIC examination staff for evaluating financial institutions for compliance with federal consumer protection laws and regulations. The manual, which is available on the FDIC's website, may help staff at institutions who are seeking to better understand the FDIC's consumer compliance examination process. The revised manual includes:

• Updated templates providing examples of a consumer compliance Report of Examination and a CRA Performance Evaluation for a hypothetical, FDIC-supervised bank (the Bank of Anytown);
• New guidance about Matters Requiring Board Attention (MRBA), a section of the Report of Examination that directs banks to important information about weaknesses in a compliance management system, depending on the facts and circumstances at a particular bank;
• Guidance on evaluating the impact of consumer harm on examination and supervisory activities;
• A new "Assessment of Risk of Consumer Harm" (ARCH), which provides pre-examination planning and scoping guidance to FDIC examination staff; and
• Additional enhancements, such as bookmarks to improve navigation, hyperlinks to many external references, and downloadable chapters.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has expanded its eRegulations collection to include CFPB regulations B, D, E, J, K, L, M and Z.

The OCC has issued Bulletin 2015-48 announcing the update of its guidance regarding its risk assessment system (RAS). These updates are reflected in the “Bank Supervision Process,” “Community Bank Supervision,” “Federal Branches and Agencies Supervision,” and “Large Bank Supervision” booklets of the Comptroller’s Handbook and internal guidance for examiners. Other Comptroller’s Handbook booklets will be updated as they are revised.

The FDIC has released a list of 51 state nonmember banks recently evaluated for compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Included were two outstanding, 46 satisfactory, and three needs-to-improve ratings.

The October 2015 update of the Commercial Bank Examination Manual has bee released by the Federal Reserve Board.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has added a Home Mortgage Disclosure (Regulation C) Small Entity Compliance Guide to its HMDA Rule implementation page to provide plain-language assistance for small entities in their efforts to comply with the upcoming changes to HMDA data collection and filing under amendments to Regulation C.

The SEC has announced that Standard Bank, now ICBC Standard Bank Plc, has agreed to settle the SEC’s charges by paying a $4.2 million penalty and admitting the facts underlying allegations that it failed to disclose certain payments in connection with debt issued by the Government of Tanzania in 2013. As part of a coordinated global settlement, the United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office also announced a settlement today in an action it brought against Standard in the U.K. for Standard’s violations of the U.K.’s Bribery Act of 2010. The Bribery Act of 2010 is similar to the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Standard will pay a total of approximately $36.9 million in monetary relief in the SEC and U.K. actions. See our Penalty entry for the SEC announcement for further information.

CRA examination schedules for the first quarter of 2016 have been released by the OCC and the FDIC.