Tracker Update 6/4/24
Now including all 2024 actions from the RBI (India), FCA and PRA (UK), and FTC.
Here at Fintech Compliance Chronicles, we are very excited about our newly launched Fintech Compliance Tracker. One of the aims we have is to house all global enforcement actions, starting with 2024 and eventually making our way backwards. As we continue to update the tracker to include more content, we will be putting out these “Tracker Update” posts which include a summary of what was added, and a bit more detail for our paid subscribers on what we think is the most critical enforcement. Given we are in our free trial period still, we’ll open this up to everyone to get an idea of what you can expect.
Statistics
Our tracker launched with 170 enforcement actions included, from the CFPB, FDIC, FRB, OCC, OFAC, CFTC, FinCEN, SEC, NYDFS, FINRA, and DFPI.
In today’s update, we have now added enforcement actions from the following regulators in the following numbers:
Prudential Regulation Authority - UK (2)
Federal Trade Commission - US (5)
Financial Conduct Authority - UK (4)
This includes all 2024 enforcement actions from these regulatory bodies. 2023 and prior years will be added once we have completed adding all major global regulators.
In addition, we added new enforcement actions for the following regulatory bodies already included:
CFPB (1)
FDIC (5)
SEC (1)
Next on our list:
Any updates from regulatory bodies previously noted
Adding 2024 actions from the following regulatory bodies:
Switzerland - FINMA
SEBI - India
China - NAFR
Brazil - BCB
Canada - FCAC, FINTRAC
Singapore - MAS, CAD
Saudi Arabia - SAMA, CMA
UAE - CBUAE, DFSA, SCA, FSRA
Hong Kong - SFC, HKMA
A global legislation and rulemaking tracker, with a focus on potential and newly passed regulations
A tracker of newly funded fintechs along with our compliance assessment of them
A complaints database that uses the CFPB’s complaint database as a starting point and builds on that using social media (in time, will be making this more global)
Highlights
The FTC is not the first regulator that is thought of when one thinks of financial services. However, in the last few months it has come out swinging against a few fintech-like players for false advertising.
Last month, Aqua Finance, a company that offers financing for “dozens of unique products,” specifically focusing on water treatment, home improvement, HVAC, and similar areas, was called out for shady practices by its door-to-door salespeople and fined $43,600,000. The banking angle here is that the salespeople coerced existing customers into opening additional lines of credit without them realizing that they already had existing lines of credit open that were relatively untapped.
In March, Biz2Credit got called out and fined $33,000,000 for delays in processing emergency PPP loan applications. The delay was about 2 weeks, which doesn’t seem like a lot until you remember the state of the economy at the start of the pandemic and how for some businesses, getting a PPP loan meant the difference between surviving and having to shut down.
The FCA and the PRA also teamed up to essentially “serve the bill” to Citigroup in the UK, amounting to a combined $79 million (£62 million), stemming from an incident back in May 2022 one of their traders made a “fat finger” error - pressing the wrong key and accidentally selling $1.4 billion of stocks on European exchanges, ultimately resulting in $189 billion in impact to the entire market. The intention was to sell only about $58 million. It is wild to think such massive trades are possible with apparently such little control, and I guess the regulators think it’s pretty wild as well. More at CNN.
If you’re interested in seeing the full suite of added actions, click here to start your free trial and we will provide you access to the tracker along with our members-only chat (and invites to future meetups) within 24 hours.