Photo of Jeffrey P. Taft

Jeffrey Taft is a partner in the Firm's Financial Services Regulatory & Enforcement group and the Cybersecurity and Data Privacy practice. His practice focuses primarily on bank regulation, bank receivership and insolvency issues, payment systems, consumer financial services and cybersecurity/privacy issues. He has extensive experience counseling financial institutions, merchants, technology companies and other entities on various federal and state banking and consumer credit issues, including compliance with the Bank Holding Company Act, National Bank Act, International Banking Act, Consumer Financial Protection Act, Truth-in-Lending Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, state unfair or deceptive acts or practices statutes, CFPB's UDAAP authority and the development and implementation of privacy, cybersecurity and information security programs under the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, the NYDFS cybersecurity regulation and industry standards, such as PCI DSS and NIST.

Read Jeff's full bio.

 

Mere days before Halloween, California enacted California Senate Bill 666, imposing a set of restrictions on the fees that commercial financers may charge their small business customers. SB 666 closely follows an August 2023 rulemaking by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation targeting unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices (“UDAAPs”) in commercial

Following closely on the heels of a Georgia law enacted in May, Connecticut and Florida have become the latest states to enact laws requiring providers of small business financing to provide disclosures to recipients—and in Connecticut’s case, to require certain commercial finance providers to register with the state. We examine the unique and interesting provisions

Providers of commercial financing should take note that Georgia has become the fifth US state to enact small business financing disclosure requirements since California started the trend in 2018. Georgia Senate Bill 90 was signed by Governor Brian Kemp on May 1, 2023, and takes effect January 1, 2024. The Georgia law applies to transactions

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized its December 2022 preliminary determination that commercial finance disclosure laws recently enacted in California, New York, Utah and Virginia are not preempted by the federal Truth in Lending Act. The CFPB’s final determination confirms for a wide range of small business financers and brokers that they

Small business financers and brokers (“providers”) active in New York are officially on notice to finalize their preparations to comply with New York’s Commercial Finance Disclosure Law (“CFDL”) by August 1, 2023, the new effective date provided in final administrative regulations just issued on February 1 by the New York Department of Financial Services (“NYDFS”). 

State-chartered banks lending to Iowa residents will want to take note of an Assurance of Discontinuance entered into in December between the State of Iowa and an out-of-state bank to settle claims that the bank charged usurious rates of interest to Iowa consumers. The settlement also highlights the Iowa Attorney General’s interpretation of the state’s

Small business lenders hoping for federal intervention will be disappointed to learn that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) has reached a preliminary determination that New York’s new commercial financing disclosure law is not preempted by the federal Truth in Lending Act (“TILA”). The CFPB’s public notice indicates that it initially takes the same view

Utah has followed California and New York by enacting its own Truth in Lending-like commercial financing disclosure law, but with an additional twist—Utah’s new law has a registration requirement. On March 24, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed SB 183 into law, with an effective date of January 1, 2023. We discuss how this new law

Marketplace lender Opportunity Financial, LLC (“OppFi”) has gone on the offensive against the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (“DFPI”) to protect its bank partnership program against challenge on a “true lender” theory. On March 7, 2022, OppFi filed suit against the DFPI to ask the state court to declare that FinWise Bank, a

The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has issued “pre-proposed” rules under New York’s commercial financing disclosure law that was enacted at the end of 2020.  The pre-proposed rules are 45 pages in length and were posted on the NYDFS website on September 21. Comments on the pre-proposed outreach rules are due by October 1. There will be a longer comment period once a proposed rule is published in the State Register. The NYDFS is aiming to finalize the rules before the law takes effect on January 1, 2022.
Continue Reading NYDFS Issues Pre-Proposed Rules to Implement New Commercial Financing Disclosure Law