Articles
FinCEN: Business email scams stole $300M a month in 2018
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) highlighted new efforts to combat business email compromise (BEC) scams – one of the most prevalent types of cyberfraud – at a FinCEN Exchange forum Tuesday. Suspicious activity reports (SARs) indicate that BEC scams led to more than $300 million stolen a month in 2018, more than three times what was reported in 2016.
RMAI Releases New Infographic Demonstrating High Compliance Level of RMAI Certified Businesses.
July 16, 2019 (Sacramento, CA): Today, Receivables Management Association International (RMAI) announced the release of a new infographic demonstrating the low number of complaints filed against Receivables Management Certification Program (RMCP) certified businesses. When looking at the number of accounts RMAI certified businesses collect on, only a small percentage of those accounts receive complaints on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Consumer Response Portal. It was found that 1 out of 5,000 accounts in collections receive complaints.
Illinois’ Attorney General Wants to Know About Data Breaches
Possibly adding to the list of states that have updated their privacy and breach notification laws this year, the Illinois legislature passed Senate Bill 1624 which would update the state’s current breach notification law to require most “data collectors,” which includes entities that, for any purpose, handle, collect, disseminate, or otherwise deal with nonpublic personal information, to notify the State’s Attorney General of certain data breaches. The state’s current statute already requires notification of a data breach to the Attorney Generals’ office, but only in the event of data breach affecting state agencies, and only if those breaches affect more than 250 Illinois residents.
OIG report looks at CFPB internal sharing of complaint data
The Office of Inspector General for the CFPB (and the Fed) recently issued a report on its evaluation of the Office of Consumer Response’s sharing of complaint data within the CFPB. As background, the report describes the tools available to Bureau users of complaint data (complaint-sharing tools) to search such data, identify issues, and summarize data, and also describes Consumer Response’s process for approving access to these tools. Based on its analysis of 2017 data, the OIG found that Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending (SEFL) accounted for the largest portion of complaint-sharing tool users and tool activity, consisting of searches and requests for internal complaint reports.
House Democrats draft bill to keep big tech out of financial services
As Congress gears up to question Facebook about its cryptocurrency project, House Democratic lawmakers are working on a bill that could ban it. The draft legislation aims to keep big tech companies out of the financial services industry. The discussion draft is a starting point for potential legislation and lawmakers will likely make changes as they continue examining the issue.
Report: 2/3 of credit cards carry revolving balance
A new report from the CFPB revealed that two-thirds of actively used credit card accounts don’t pay off the full balance at the end of the billing cycle. Those accounts that carry a revolving balance do so continuously for 10 months on average; 15 percent revolve continuously for two years or more.
Former Wells Fargo CEO: ‘This is the time’ for bank acquisitions
The depressed valuations for banks and other financial firms mean “this is the time” for acquisitions and mergers in the industry, a former CEO of Wells Fargo said Monday. “Anytime you have high regulations in any industry, you get concentration, and banks are cheap,” Richard Kovacevich said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell. ” “So if you’re going to acquire, this is the time to acquire financial institutions.”
CFPB should conduct ‘regular, robust’ reviews of regs
CUNA supports the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) conducting regular, robust reviews of its regulations with an eye toward reducing burden, it wrote to the CFPB Monday in response to the agency’s review plan as required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act. The act requires agencies to conduct a review of a rule ten years after final action, focusing on the rule’s economic impact on small entities. According to the CFPB’s plan, it intends to initiate its review approximately one year before the 10-year deadline, and although not required by statute, the CFPB will also solicit feedback from stakeholders via public comment on the rule under review.
BankThink State regulators are critical to fintech oversight
Fintech regulation is getting a lot of scrutiny lately, especially as large, well-known entities want to enter the emerging industry. Just a couple of weeks ago, I testified before a House Financial Services Committee task force as chair of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS) committee to discuss the role of state regulators in fintech oversight. While Congress and others may know how we supervise the 79% of the nation’s banks which are state-chartered, there have been a lot of questions about how we license and enforce compliance for fintech companies. That is because the current intersection between financial services and technology has accelerated change in the industry.
FCC commissioner blasts carriers for failure to fight robocalls
Carriers have been slow to address the growing robocall problem, but the Federal Communications Commission may be about to force their hand. In a letter to fourteen US carriers, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks today called out the confusing and often ineffective options available to consumers for fighting automated spam calls, and threatened regulatory action if the carriers do not improve. “Despite historically clamoring for new tools, it does not appear that all providers have acted with haste to deploy opt-out robocall blocking services,” Starks told the carriers. “The Commission spoke clearly: we expect opt-out call blocking services to be offered to consumers for free. Reviewing the substance of these responses, by and large, carriers’ plans for these services are far from clear.”