Regulators to Discuss Changing Compliance Landscape at AFRCS

Calvin Hagins, deputy assistant director for originations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Colin Hector, attorney for the division of financial practices at the Federal Trade Commission, joins the roster of speakers for this year’s Auto Finance Risk and Compliance Summit slated to take place May 15 and 16 in San Diego.

John Redding, partner at Buckley Sandler LLP, will moderate the regulatory panel at to discuss updates to rules and guidance, subprime compliance news, as well as the regulators’ views on best practices.

“People are starting to understand that the bureau is still actively looking at auto finance, but I think [the CFPB] is looking at it differently,” Redding told Auto Finance News. “The industry is understandably asking, ‘Do we need to maintain our compliance management system? Do we need to keep looking at the various issues that the bureau may be interested in?’ The answer is yes, we need to keep looking, but I think we need to understand what we need to be looking at.”

Lenders have pointed to the CFPB Fair Lending Director Patrice Ficklin’s December guidance, which did not list auto finance among the bureau’s top priorities, as a sign that regulatory scrutiny will calm down. However, Redding said enforcement is just being directed elsewhere.

“Anything having to do with consumer privacy and data, it’s a fairly high-risk area, there has been a lot of activity generally in the space,” he said. “I think privacy, data use, those types of activities, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them [the CFPB] moving down that path.”

Redlining — refusal or a failure to offer goods or services into minority areas — was one of the bullet points on Ficklin’s fair lending post. “Just because we see it in mortgage doesn’t mean it’s limited to mortgage,” Redding warned.

The Auto Finance Risk and Compliance Summit is a two-day conference, slated for May 15 – 16, in San Diego at the Hilton Bayfront hotel.