The American Bar Association Business Law Section is hosting the 2018 Consumer Financial Services Meeting from Jan. 6 to Jan. 9 in Park City, Utah. Featured guests will include Federal Trade Commission attorney Ben Rossen, acting associate director of the Division of Financial Practice Malini Mithal and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement attorney Mauricio Videla.
Topics to be discussed during the four-day meeting include: “Online identification and verification services, cybersecurity compliance, payday lending and the impact of the new Federal Trade Secrets Act on mortgage originator recruiting,” according to the ABA. Also on the agenda is a discussion of widespread changes to the regulatory system after the 2007 financial crisis and subsequent recovery.
“Consequently, the diversity of thought leaders and practitioners grew significantly in all practice areas, including regulatory, private practice, in-house, and plaintiff's counsel,” the event schedule reads. Rossen will present on cybersecurity and address the recent Equifax data breach. Mithal will touch on Unfair, Deceptive, or Abusive Acts or Practices (UDAAP) concerns and online marketing pitfalls associated with “lead generators, product aggregators and social media influencers.”
Videla will participate in a diversity discussion at a breakfast meeting. A panel of speakers will also discuss the Military Lending Act credit card rules that went into effect in October, the ABA reports.
High-profile cybersecurity breaches like the Equifax hack have caught the attention of legal professionals and lawmakers in recent months. The company itself appointed Mark Rohrwasser as interim chief information officer and Russ Ayres chief security officer after top officials stepped down following the incident. The incident potentially compromised the security of 143 million U.S. consumers’ names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and license numbers.
Further, according to information from Equifax, the credit card number of 209,000 consumers were also impacted by the incident. “The company is fully committed to proactively supporting consumers who may have been impacted by the cybersecurity incident,” said Equifax officials, in a release.
“The company worked diligently with Mandiant to determine what information was accessed and identify the potentially impacted consumers in order to make an appropriate public disclosure of the incident. As soon as the company understood the potentially impacted population, a comprehensive support package was rolled out to consumers on September 7, 2017.”
Considering the rapid globalization of commerce, credit services and technology, panelists will also discuss cross-border consumer financial service compliance issues. Suhuyini Abudulai of Cassels Brock; Toronto, Ontario and Robin Nunn, partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, will tackle international compliance developments. Some of the topics to be covered will include lending disclosure, credit reporting and unfair and misleading practices, according to the program schedule.
More information about the event can be found from the American Bar Association and a full schedule can be found here (PDF).