On June 16, 2022, the CFPB released an article focusing on the agency’s efforts to collect key metrics from some supervised institutions regarding the consumer impact of their overdraft and non-sufficient fund (NSF) practices. In early December of 2021, we wrote an article about the CFPB’s research on banks’ dependence on overdraft fees. Since then, the Bureau has been actively conducting close supervision to financial institutions with high shares of frequent overdrafters or with higher average fee burden for overdrafts.

On June 14, 2022, the CFPB Director Rohit Chopra announced, at a public town hall, Request for Information on how bank customers can assert their rights to better customer service with big banks. The Request for Information seeks data about, and consumer experiences with, the obstacles that may prevent people from receiving high standards of customer service and high-quality human interactions with their banks or credit unions.

On June 13, 2022, the CFPB released its annual report on the top financial concerns facing servicemembers, veterans, and military families, based on the complaints they submitted to the CFPB. Concerns reported by the servicemembers include billing inaccuracies and that debt collectors used aggressive tactics to recover allegedly unpaid medical bills. Servicemembers also reported failures by credit reporting companies in helping to resolve inaccuracies and other credit reporting issues.

On June 3, 2022, the FTC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend the Telemarketing Sales Rule. The proposed amendments would require telemarketers and sellers to maintain additional records of their telemarketing transactions, prohibit material misrepresentations and false or misleading statements in business to business (“B2B”) telemarketing transactions, and add a new definition for the term “previous donor.”

On June 3, 2022, the FTC published an article which talked about crypto scam losses. According to the latest FTC Consumer Protection Data Spotlight, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams since the start of 2021. That’s about one out of every four dollars reportedly lost to fraud during that period. According to the report, the median individual reported loss is $2,600.

On 6/1/2022, the FDIC’s website was updated to reflect two amended sections of its Consumer Compliance Examination Manual. Specifically, the sections updated including the section on Examination and Visitation Frequency as well as the section on the Electronic Fund Transfer Act. The Consumer Compliance Examination Manual is a valuable resource for FDIC-regulated banks, as this document is a primary resource utilized by FDIC examiners when conducting oversight of FDIC-regulated banks.