CFPB Consent Order
- Source: consumerfinance.gov
Treliant Takeaway:
Treliant’s Corporate & Regulatory Compliance practice stands ready to assist you as you navigate ever-changing regulations and resulting consumer lending requirements. From transaction level through transformation, Treliant’s well-seasoned professionals can help. As UDAAP-related regulatory enforcement continues to expand, now is the time to document and test to ensure that your actions and outcomes are compliant.
Consent Order Highlights:
On November 18th, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a consent order against U.S. Equity Advantage, Inc. (“USEA”) and its owner, Robert M. Steenbergh. At issue was the misrepresentation on the company’s disclosures and advertisements of individualized benefits and interest savings that the consumers would receive from the company’s auto loan Payment Accelerator Program.
USEA and its owner operated a program named AutoPayPlus, which collected payments from consumers every two weeks and then subsequently forwarded the payments to the consumers’ lenders on a monthly basis. The company and its owner charged fees to consumers for enrollment into this program. The Bureau found that the company misrepresented the savings that consumers would receive by failing to account for the program’s $399 enrollment fee in the information on the disclosures presented to consumers. It also found that the program’s cost generally exceeded any savings, due to the inclusion of the enrollment fee. In addition, the Bureau found that the company and its owner misrepresented the fact that they had assisted hundreds of thousands of consumers save more than $29 million in interest charges when they enrolled in the company’s AutoPayPlus program, as there was no evidence to support this claim.