Top Story Compliance Related

In remarks before the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Comptroller Curry discussed the OCC’s work to promote a vibrant and diverse banking system capable of meeting the needs of consumers, businesses, and communities throughout the nation. Curry stated, “In the last five years, the OCC has devoted a great deal of effort not just to mitigating the fallout from the last financial crisis, but to preventing a recurrence. To this end, we have redoubled our efforts to improve our supervisory processes, including those that ensure fair access for consumers and small businesses and fair treatment of bank customers.” Curry concluded, “I’m proud of what we have accomplished at the OCC and steps we’ve taken to ensure the agency can succeed in this important part of its statutory mission. The OCC has an organizational structure prepared to meet the supervisory challenges of the future. We have sharpened our focus on compliance and consumer protection in a landscape of rapid technological change. We have broken new ground with enhanced compliance policies and enforcement to ensure that vulnerable consumers are treated fairly. We assess community needs when considering merger and acquisition applications and, where necessary, imposed conditions to address fair access and fair treatment through the implementation of CRA plans, when appropriate.”

The Federal Trade Commission released its 2016 Annual Highlights, which demonstrate the agency’s ongoing efforts to protect consumers and promote competition over the past calendar year, and include some of the Commission’s biggest successes to date. The agency’s enforcement highlights address its key legal actions across many sectors, including health care, technology and other consumer products and services. On the policy front, the FTC filed eight amicus briefs on topics such as pharmaceutical markets, reverse payments and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Staff conducted 20 workshops and conferences on a range of topics including state regulation of auto sales, solar distribution generation, security for startup businesses and a number of tech-driven workshops. The agency’s education highlights tout the agency’s work to help businesses understand their rights and legal responsibilities, and inform people about ways to avoid fraud and deceptive business practices.

The Federal Reserve Board has announced the execution of an enforcement action and the assessment of a $11,000 civil money penalty against the Bank of Star City, Star City, Arkansas, for violations of the National Flood Insurance Act. See our Flood Penalty Page for further information.

The CFPB has released its monthly complaint snapshot, which this month focuses on consumer complaints about credit cards. The snapshot shows that consumers continue to report problems when they attempt to dispute charges on their cards. This month’s report also highlights trends seen in complaints coming from Massachusetts.

OFAC has announced it has removed a Zimbabwean from the SDN List. See BankersOnline's OFAC Update for details.

The Bureau has announced a proposal to increase flexibility for mortgage lenders in collecting demographic information. The CFPB’s proposal would provide compliance flexibility for individual mortgage lenders, and would also support the broader mortgage industry’s ability to use consistent forms and compliance practices. Under the proposal, mortgage lenders would not be required to maintain different practices depending on their loan volume or other characteristics, allowing more lenders to adopt application forms that include expanded requests for information regarding a consumer’s ethnicity and race, including the revised Uniform Residential Loan Application. The proposal also contains other amendments to Regulation B and its commentary to facilitate compliance with Regulation B’s requirements for the collection and retention of information about the ethnicity, race, and sex of applicants seeking certain types of mortgage loans. Comments will be accepted for 30 days following publication in the Federal Register.

UPDATE: Published April 4, 2017, with comment deadline of May 4, 2017.

The FDIC and the FRB have jointly announced the completion of the 2015 resolution plans of 16 domestic banks and separately issued guidance to four foreign banks. Resolution plans, required by the Dodd-Frank Act and commonly known as living wills, must describe the company's strategy for rapid and orderly resolution under bankruptcy in the event of material financial distress or failure of the company. For foreign banking organizations, resolution plans are focused on their U.S. operations.

The domestic banks evaluated were: American Express Company, Ally Financial Inc., BB&T Corporation, Capital One Financial Corporation, Comerica Incorporated, Discover Financial Services, Fifth Third Bancorp, Huntington Bancshares Incorporated, KeyCorp, M&T Bank Corporation, Northern Trust Corporation, Regions Financial Corporation, SunTrust Banks, Inc., The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., U.S. Bancorp, and Zions Bancorporation. The agencies identified shortcomings in Northern Trust Corporation's resolution plan, which must be satisfactorily addressed in the firm's 2017 plan due by December 31.

The SEC has announced the opening of registration for its compliance outreach program seminars for investment companies and investment advisers. The seminars will be offered in Portland, New York City, Boston, and Chicago. They are intended to help Chief Compliance Officers and other senior personnel enhance compliance programs at investment companies and investment advisory firms.

The Federal Reserve Board has announced the execution of a written agreement with Santander Holdings USA, Inc., of Boston, Massachusetts, a bank holding company, and Santander Consumer USA, Inc., of Dallas, Texas, a non-bank subsidiary engaged in automobile financing for dealers and consumers.

The CFPB has announced an enforcement action taken against Experian Holdings, Inc., Experian Information Solutions, Inc., and ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. d/b/a Experian Consumer Services (collectively, Experian) following a review of Experian's marketing practices. The Bureau stated that Experian deceptively marketed credit scores by misrepresenting that those it provided to consumers were the same scores lenders use to determine creditworthiness. The CFPB also said that Experian illegally placed advertisements for its products on webpages that consumers accessed through AnnualCreditReport.com before the consumers obtained their free annual file disclosures. Experian was ordered to pay a $3 million civil money penalty to the CFPB's Civil Penalty Fund, truthfully represent the usefulness of credit scores it sells, and put in place an effective compliance management system. See "Experian pays $3M for deceptively marketing scores," in our Penalty pages, for additional information.

TransUnion and Equifax were penalized by the Bureau in January for similar deceptive credit score marketing and other infractions.