On May 4, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order aimed at creating a framework for both regulating and developing the quickly growing blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. The Order follows President Biden’s March 9, 2022, Executive Order on Ensuring responsible Development of digital Assets. In a press release announcing the Order, the Governor’s office cited the rapid growth of the crypto asset and blockchain technology business—from $14 billion five years ago to $3 trillion last November—as the impetus for issuing the Order.
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The California Supreme Court Rules that Lenders Have No General Tort Duty to Process, Review, and Respond to a Borrower’s Application for a Loan Modification
Yesterday, in Sheen v. Wells Fargo (S258019), the California Supreme Court resolved an important issue for the mortgage servicing industry. The court unanimously held that lenders owe no tort duty to process, review, and respond to a borrower’s loan modification application.
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Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council Issues Statement on Pandemic Planning
In response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, on March 6, 2020, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued an Interagency Statement on Pandemic Planning on behalf of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Credit Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the State Liaison Committee.
The Statement identifies actions that financial institutions should take to minimize the potential adverse effects of a pandemic and provides specific items that should be addressed in a financial institution’s business continuity plan (BCP). Due to the wide variety of possible ramifications from a pandemic, BCPs should be updated to provide for a “preventative program, a documented strategy scaled to the stages of pandemic outbreak, a comprehensive framework to ensure the continuance of critical operations, a testing program, and an oversight program to ensure that the plan is reviewed and updated.”
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Trend Analysis: Rise in Automotive Repossession Class Actions
With the growth of the automotive loan market, which just this month has been the subject of examination by national publications such as the Wall Street Journal, has come a corresponding rise in auto loan delinquencies. For automotive finance companies, auto repossessions represent a risk for affirmative claims by consumers both on an individual and, more significantly, on a class basis. Recently, there has been an uptick in class actions against automotive finance companies alleging technical violations of state and federal law governing repossessions.
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