Current State of Consumer Credit Reporting: The good, the bad and the ugly

Troy Kubes | FTI Consulting, Inc.

Troy Kubes is a Managing Director in the Financial Services practice and is based in Atlanta, GA. He has more than 20 years of extensive FCRA, GLBA, TCPA, UDAAP, etc. in data governance, credit reporting, consumer protection, and fraud.

Mr. Kubes’ key regulatory, compliance, and risk experience includes direct responsibility for engagement with federal and state regulators including the CFPB, FTC, State Attorneys General, and State Banking Regulators; identifying and remediating matters that directly impact regulatory and/or reputational risk; serving as primary legal, compliance and risk lead for Equifax Inc.’s Consumer Operations, Furnisher Data Reporting and Data Ingestion and Business Rules; along with extensive engagement with the CDIA, Metro 2® reporting standards, and e-OSCAR®, including serving on e-OSCAR’s management board. Additionally, Mr. Kubes has direct experience in incident response and crisis management protocols. Mr. Kubes uses this experience to assist financial institutions, captive auto lenders, mortgage companies, and other industries in evaluating and enhancing compliance frameworks, managing and mitigating risks, remediating control gaps, and assisting with federal and state regulatory oversight.

Prior to joining FTI, Mr. Kubes spent over 20 years with Equifax Inc. and most recently was the Vice President and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer. He was the lead compliance officer for all U.S.-based regulatory compliance efforts across multiple business units. Mr. Kubes was responsible for issues management, regulatory compliance frameworks, and change management. In addition, he was on the Executive Leadership Team focused on consumer operations and consumer-facing products and services.

Also, during his tenure with Equifax, Mr. Kubes served as Vice President and Group Counsel within the legal department. Some of his key responsibilities included managing its litigation portfolio, overseeing proactive and reactive risk mitigation efforts, extensive engagement with Federal and State regulators, and has held leadership roles with tri-consumer reporting agency initiatives and in-depth engagement with customers focused on data reporting and dispute challenges.

Mr. Kubes holds a B.B.A. in Corporate Finance- Magna Cum Laude from Stetson University and a Juris Doctor with Honors from the University of Florida College of Law.

Badri Sridhar | FTI Consulting, Inc.

Badri Sridhar is a Managing Director in the Financial Services practice, specializing in assisting financial institutions and their outside counsel with regulatory requirements related to consumer financial protection. Mr. Sridhar has over 15 years of experience in performing current state assessments of various banking processes, implementing regulatory change management initiatives, and presenting his findings and recommendations to C-Suite executives. This experience, complemented by his involvement leading cross-functional teams, have positioned Mr. Sridhar as a trusted advisor for clients of all sizes.

Mr. Sridhar’s experience has covered a variety of consumer financial protection regulations including the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), issues related to unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices (UDAAP) and reviews of compliance management systems. Further, he has extensive experience related to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) including developing and implementing holistic solutions related to credit furnishing, credit dispute handling processes and complaints management.

Mr. Sridhar also has extensive experience with all phases of the system development lifecycle, including leading teams in the development of business requirements documentation (BRD), user acceptance testing (UAT) and reviews of system logic against regulatory expectations and business rules.

Mr. Sridhar holds a B.S. degree in Accounting from Pennsylvania State University. He is also a Certified Public Accountant licensed in the state of New York.

Jessica Pollet | Cooley LLP.

Jessica advises banks, non-bank lenders, fintech companies, and other financial services providers in connection with complex regulatory and enforcement matters. She routinely assists clients with regulatory examinations, and advises on compliance with federal and state consumer financial protection statutes, including unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices (UDAP and UDAAP) statutes under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

Jessica also represents clients in federal and state enforcement actions, including investigations initiated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), state regulatory agencies such as the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), and state attorneys general.

Jessica’s recent work includes:

• Performing qualitative risk assessments, such as those focused on fair lending, UDAAP and consumer reporting compliance, for entities offering mortgages, auto loans and credit cards
• Assisting clients in CFPB pre-enforcement and enforcement matters, including managing self-disclosures, and responding to Proposed Action and Request for Response (PARR) and Notice and Opportunity to Respond and Advise (NORA) letters
• Counseling companies in matters involving multi-agency and multistate investigation and examination matters, including with various state regulators and state attorneys general, as well as federal agencies such as the FTC
• Assisting private equity firms with regulatory due diligence in support of acquisitions of financial services companies
• Advising clients on the development and enhancement of financial products and services in a manner that is consistent with regulatory requirements and which mitigates government scrutiny

Publications:

• “Accurate FCRA Reporting During COVID-19” by Marshall Bell, Jonathan Jerison and Jessica Pollet, June 5, 2020, Bloomberg Law
• “Breaking Down (Language) Barriers: A Practical Approach to LEP Borrowers” by Jessica L. Pollet and Susanna K. Sedrak, March 4, 2019, Westlaw Journal Bank & Lender Liability

Margaret Shea, Moderator | FTI Consulting, Inc.

Margaret Shea is a Senior Director in the Financial Services practice based in San Francisco. Ms. Shea has industry expertise in consumer lending, compliance operations, operational risks and controls, operational effectiveness, and disputes and litigation. Ms. Shea has almost 20 years of experience providing regulatory compliance, forensic accounting and investigations, financial analysis, and dispute resolution consulting services.

Ms. Shea manages and performs reviews and risk assessments of controls on behalf of financial institutions in response to mitigating regulatory compliance, operational and reputational risks. She has led several key initiatives and assisted financial institutions with managing and reviewing regulatory compliance obligations in the consumer finance industry, specializing in assessing and remediating controls in relation to examination findings and citations. Ms. Shea has managed teams involved in reviews of thousands of loans as part of lookback reviews and proactive controls testing, which involved reviewing loan or transaction-level data and supporting documentation to assess adherence to policies, procedures and regulatory requirements. Ms. Shea has experience in a wide range of consumer finance products, including mortgage, student loans, credit card, deposits and installment contracts, among others.

Ms. Shea recently served as the interim head of Compliance for a consumer finance company, managing daily operations of the Compliance department, remediating regulatory findings, and identifying various areas of process enhancement, including to the credit underwriting, collections, credit reporting and third party oversight processes. Her tasks also included providing compliance guidance to business operations for strategic initiatives, liaising with outside counsel and regulatory agencies, and preparing and presenting executive and Board reporting. Specific issues addressed included fair lending, debt collections, general consumer protections, complaints management, and compliance monitoring.

Her experience also includes Consent Order compliance, including leading a team in reviewing and scoping borrower solicitations for complaints related to foreclosure and loss mitigation in the Independent Foreclosure Review. She has led multiple teams performing risk and controls self-assessments, including standing up risk and controls self-assessment programs for a top 3 U.S. bank’s mortgage banking unit in third-party oversight and Making Home Affordable compliance, and a top 3 U.S. bank’s investment bank in third party servicing oversight for its investment portfolio of residential mortgage across all applicable federal and state regulations, including bankruptcy and foreclosure requirements.

Additionally, Ms. Shea has provided support in providing expert opinions related to various consumer finance regulations and requirements, including oversight of loan-specific testing and determining appropriate damages incurred by parties in disputes and complex claims.

She has led multiple teams engaged by outside counsel on a variety of matters related to mortgage servicing, student lending and asset-backed securities valuation.

I. Legal and Regulatory Landscape | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

II. Regulatory Expectations for Furnishing Quality Control | 2:10pm – 2:25pm

III. Interplay of Consumer Disputes with Data Accuracy | 2:25pm – 2:40pm

IV. Practical Considerations for Review and Enhancement | 2:40pm – 2:50pm

V. Tea Leaves for the Future | 2:50pm – 3:00pm