January 2017
Compliance jobs in financial services have been a hot prospect for attorneys ever since enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. For the moment, that continues, thanks in large part to the compliance and enforcement activities of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (http://consumerfinance.gov), the watchdog agency established by Dodd-Frank. CFPB’s latest Compliance Bulletin zeroes in on detecting and preventing consumer harm related to incentive programs. Prior 2016 bulletins concerned mortgage lending reporting failures and student debt relief scams.
All of this puts huge compliance burdens on the nation’s banks and thousands of other financial services companies, and not just the major ones. Dodd-Frank and the CFPB impact just as much on small companies and community banks. It is the rare outfit of any size these days that can avoid having an in-house compliance expert or team, many of whose members are attorneys.
Caveat. The incoming Trump administration and its Republican allies on the Hill are itching to take down both Dodd-Frank and the CFPB, so stay tuned.