Big Law Redefined: Episode 1 | The New Frontier of Fair Lending: 2022 Enforcement Trends and Emerging Risks

Lisa M. Simonetti focuses on the defense of complex litigation, with broad experience representing clients in the financial services industry, including regional and national banks, credit card issuers, mortgage bankers, various types of loan servicers, consumer finance companies and third-party collectors. She serves as trial and appellate counsel in courts across the country and routinely counsels financial services clients on compliance with state and federal laws and regulations. Concentrations Telephone Consumer Protection Act Fair Credit Reporting Act Fair Debt Collection Practices Act Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z Loan origination and loan servicing issues Unfair and deceptive trade practices Consumer fraud Identity theft Predatory lending

Benjamin Saul is a shareholder in the firm’s Financial Regulatory and Compliance Practice. For two decades, Ben has been a trusted advisor to corporate and individual clients in the FinTech, consumer finance, specialty finance, payments, and banking sectors on high-stakes regulatory, enforcement, litigation and transactional matters. In his enforcement practice, Ben has helped clients navigate dozens of contentious supervisory, enforcement, and litigation matters involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and has been a leader in the private bar on CFPB matters since the Bureau’s inception in 2011. He also routinely assists clients in matters involving the FTC, DOJ, HUD, OCC, FRB, FDIC, state financial services authorities, state attorneys general, and state civil rights commissions. Ben’s enforcement matters have concerned fair lending and servicing, unfair deceptive or abusive trade practices, other federal and state consumer finance laws, payments and card network issues, AML/BSA, troubled or failed banks, fiduciary duties, financial institution fraud, leveraged lending, supervisory ratings, and other safety and soundness issues. These matters often have involved parallel proceedings by multiple enforcement agencies and private parties. In his regulatory practice, Ben has advised lenders, servicers, specialty finance companies, money services businesses, digital banks, SaaS companies, e-commerce companies and retailers, personal finance companies, and crypto and DeFi companies on product and service development, licensing and chartering, structuring and negotiating joint venture, outsourcing and bank partnership agreements, compliance program enhancement, and the applicability of federal and state financial services laws. He frequently helps clients understand how such laws map onto new technologies and innovative products. In his transactional practice, Ben has advised private equity funds, venture capital funds, hedge funds, and strategic investors on risk identification and mitigation and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals for financial services and FinTech mergers and acquisitions and other investments. He has also provided financial services and FinTech regulatory advice to issuers and underwriters of public and private securities offerings.