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.

On May 24, 2022, the CFPB announced that it is opening a new office, the Office of Competition and Innovation, as part of a new approach to help spur innovation in financial services by promoting competition and identifying stumbling blocks for new market entrants. The office will replace the Office of Innovation that focused on an application-based process to confer special regulatory treatment on individual companies. With the new office, the CFPB will be able to analyze obstacles to open markets, better understand how big players squeeze smaller ones out, and host incubation events, in order to enhance user choice in the financial world.

On May 24, 2022, Acting Comptroller to the Currency Michael J. Hsu spoke at the DC Blockchain Summit 2022 where he shared his observations on crypto from a bank regulator’s perspective. A self-confessed crypto skeptic, Hsu talked about the need to reset and recalibrate the problems that the crypt industry is trying to solve.