Introduction to the 2017 Annual Survey of Consumer Financial Services Law

The flow of new regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB") has diminished with respect to mortgage lending but encompasses many new areas as the CFPB continues to expand the scope of its regulatory and enforcement powers. The first survey reports on court decisions that have narrowed the key definition of "debt collector" and thereby narrowed application of the FDCPA to entities that acquire debt obligations and have gone into default.6 The second reports on several CFPB enforcement actions against debt buyers and debt collectors that allegedly violated the FDCPA and other statutes, as well as on an FDCPA-proposed rulemaking that would, for the first time, exercise the CFPB's power to issue regulations under the FDCPA.7 The TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures Rule that was reported on in the previous Annual Survey8 was the subject of further proposed amendments that contain some significant changes from the final rule that was issued at the end of 2013 and became effective in 2015, along with many minor changes and technical corrections.9 However, many concerns that have been voiced by the mortgage lending industry remain unresolved.10 During the past year, the CFPB proposed an arbitration rule11 that followed its issuance of an empirical study of consumer arbitration that was reported on in the previous Annual Survey 12 The proposed rule would prohibit class action waivers in consumer arbitration agreements and require companies that use arbitration clauses for individual disputes to submit those claims to the CFPB to allow it to monitor the fairness of...