The Federal Financial Forum

From: Wall Street Journal

Comments come as the New York Fed is set to hold a supervision conference Friday at its headquarters

By Katy Burne

A top investigator at the U.S. Government Accountability Office charged with probing whether the Federal Reserve’s bank supervisors are too heavily influenced by Wall Street firms said the review may involve other regulators.

“It’s possible we will look at other federal financial regulators,” Lawrance Evans, an economist and director in the GAO’s financial markets and community investment unit, said in an interview earlier this week.

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From: PYMNTS.com

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New Regulatory Interest

Signs of the CFPB’s growing interest in online lending marketplaces have emerged throughout early 2016, most recently with the regulators actively encouraging borrowers to submit complaints when they encounter issues with online borrowing.

The database consumers would be feeding is one of the organization’s guiding tools for supervision, enforcement and regulation creation — and the notice last week indicates an inclination to begin taking a closer and more comprehensive look at the emerging class of technology-backed lending outfits.

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From: Politico

By David Pittman

FCC SPECTRUM AUCTION: GOOD OR BAD FOR HEALTH CARE?: Hospitals are worried sick about the FCC’s plan to sell broadcast airwaves in the March 29 spectrum auction. The FCC’s handling of spectrum use around the auction will put wireless hospital devices — fetal-heart monitors, trackers on Alzheimer’s patients and the like — at risk for interference from others placed very near it, the American Hospital Association says. Hospitals already have a dedicated channel to use for such devices, Channel 37, but the FCC is endangering that by crowding the space with new wireless broadcasting, the AHA says. They continue to plead with the commission and Congress for help.

Editor’s Note: Cross-posted from Regulatory Cyber Security/FISMA Focus

From: Norton Rose Fulbright

By David Navetta (US) and Boris Segalis (US)

On March 2, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) released a Consent Order entered between it and Dwolla, a company providing an online money transfer and payment processing platform to consumers.  The Consent Order alleges that Dwolla made false representations concerning its data security practices and engaged in deceptive acts and practices in connection with the offering of consumer financial products or services, in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 (“CFPA”) sections 12 U.S.C. 5531(a) and 5536(a)(1).

Editor’s Note: Cross-posted from Regulatory Cyber Security/FISMA Focus

From: The National Law Journal

C. Ryan Barber, The National Law Journal

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has fired a shot across the bow of the burgeoning online-payment industry, taking an enforcement action this week that marked the agency’s first foray into regulating cybersecurity.

Dwolla Inc., a Des Moines-based digital payment startup, agreed to pay a $100,000 penalty and improve its data security practices as part of a consent order that the bureau issued Wednesday. Without alleging that the company was breached, the bureau accused Dwolla of overstating the measures it took to protect consumers’ personal information between December 2010 and 2014.