Arbitration

Credit unions rely on a brand of fairness and trustworthiness, which would be severely weakened if more credit unions started using forced arbitration.

Why are credit unions lending their name to this fight when the vast majority of them do not use forced arbitration and have not been caught up in Wall Street’s excesses?

Treasury contests agency’s claims that ban on mandatory arbitration benefits consumers; former head of FX trading used client information to profit the bank.

With days ticking down for lawmakers to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule, some are now questioning the statistics used to challenge the bureau’s data.

The Treasury Department released an 18-page report saying the rule would “impose extraordinary costs” including legal fees mostly for lawyers that bring class-action lawsuits.

Regulators usually avoid the public fights that define other realms of the polarized Washington landscape, but the recent tiff over the arbitration rule is an exception.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency used "flawed statistics" and misstated the effects of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's arbitration rule on community banks, Director Richard Cordray said Friday.

In an op-ed, acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika argued that allowing consumers to sue financial institutions in class actions would raise credit costs and harm small banks.

The payday lending industry is planning to use the same playbook employed by the financial services industry in its fight against the CFPB's arbitration rule.

Wells Fargo's home state of California passed a law aimed at curtailing the bank's use of closed-door arbitration to shroud complaints from aggrieved customers affected by its scandals.

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan took heat from Senate Democrats, who questioned his fitness for the job, the bank's use of mandatory arbitration clauses and even whether its charter should be revoked.

The groups argue that the CFPB did not properly conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the rule banning mandatory arbitration agreements and that the final product will harm, not help, consumers.

Readers comment on the ripple effects of the Equifax breach, who benefits from the CFPB's final arbitration rule, gender-related issues in financial services, and more.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika affirmed Thursday that the agency’s fintech charter, if implemented, could be granted to commercial firms like Walmart or Google.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s final rule on arbitration clauses may be bad news for alleged corporate wrongdoers like Equifax and Wells Fargo, but surely for the victims of such wrongdoing — and for consumers, generally — it is good news indeed.

Readers chime in on debates about ILCs, the CFPB’s arbitration rule, the financial services ambitions of tech firms and more.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s final rule on arbitration clauses may be bad news for alleged corporate wrongdoers like Equifax and Wells Fargo, but surely for the victims of such wrongdoing — and for consumers, generally — it is good news indeed.

Democrats have strived to paint recent scandals at Wells Fargo and Equifax as prime examples of why a regulatory rule banning mandatory arbitration agreements should be upheld, but Republicans are not wavering in their campaign to overturn it.

The hearings before the Senate Banking Committee have high stakes for both companies, as lawmakers are expected to ask the CEOs whether they should be fired.

Without the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's expanding consumers' legal options, they will continue to be vulnerable to the abusive practices that have proliferated throughout the financial industry in recent years.