November 2, 2026
Below you will find several key developments in the financial services industry, including related developments in information privacy and data security, from the past week. We add an "Amicus Brief(ly)1" comment to each item, where we briefly (see what we did there?) note for friends (and again?) of CounselorLibrary the important takeaways from the developments outlined in the email. Our legal reporters - CARLAW, HouseLaw, InstallmentLaw, PrivacyLaw, and BizFinLaw - provide more comprehensive, real-time updates of federal and state laws, regulations, litigation, and other industry items of interest. For a personal guided tour and free trial of any of these legal reporters, please contact Michael Willer at 614-855-0505 or mwiller@counselorlibrary.com.
On October 28, the Federal Trade Commission announced that, pursuant to its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act, it issued orders to several major airlines, ride sharing companies, and food delivery companies requesting information regarding their use of personal data to affect or set prices for consumers and compensation for employees. The information will be used by the FTC to conduct a study of "how firms develop and deploy strategies that make use of personal data to set different prices at which particular consumers are offered goods and services or to set different compensation offered to particular workers." According to FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the agency "intend[s] to scrutinize the opaque methodology that some companies in these industries may be using to determine how much consumers pay or how much gig workers are paid for the same product or service. Consumers deserve to know whether companies use their web surfing habits or other personal data to estimate the highest price they can charge each consumer. Workers also deserve to know if their compensation is affected by how companies use their personal data." The FTC's orders note that "confidential or privileged commercial or financial information will be reported by the Commission on an aggregate or anonymous basis."
In August, the FTC sought public comment on a proposed policy statement concerning personalized pricing, which stated that the agency "intends to enforce the law aggressively against any deceptive or unfair personalized pricing practices that violate Section 5 of the FTC Act or any other law enforced by the Commission. Where consumers reasonably expect that prices for a product or service will not vary based on their personal data, businesses that engage in personalized pricing should clearly and conspicuously disclose not just that the price is personalized, but also the basis for that personalization and the types of data on which the personalization is based."
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On October 27, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General announced that its Consumer Protection Division entered into a $600,000 settlement with a financial technology company that offers an earned wage access product called "Instant Cash" to Maryland consumers. The product provides consumers with cash advances between $25 and $500 and imposes an additional fee on consumers to access the funds "instantly" unless they opt into the premium subscription.
The CPD alleged that, prior to October 1, 2025, the date that Maryland's Earned Wage Access and Credit Modernization Act went into effect, the company's EWA product was a loan subject to the license requirements in Maryland's Commercial Law Article, Title 12, Subtitles 1 and 3 (Maryland's consumer lending laws) and that the company offered its EWA product without the required license. On April 2, 2024, the company applied for a lending license from the Maryland Commissioner of Labor, Office of Financial Regulation, but the company's license application is pending as of the effective date of this settlement.
In addition, the CPD alleged that the company engaged in unfair and deceptive practices that violated the Maryland Consumer Protection Act with respect to the advertising, offering, and delivery of its EWA product. The MCPA makes it an unfair, abusive, or deceptive trade practice to make statements that are capable of misleading consumers or to fail to disclose material facts, the omission of which deceive or tend to deceive consumers. Specifically, the CPD alleged that, between December 2019 and October 2023, the company misled consumers by: (1) offering them instant access to a cash advance without clearly disclosing that they would have to pay additional fees (including, at times, a recurring subscription fee) to get the proceeds instantly; (2) representing that they could access an advance amount when, in fact, they generally did not qualify for the advertised amount; and (3) preventing cancellation of a subscription or recurring charge if they had taken an EWA advance and not repaid it, thus causing them to pay continued subscription fees.
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On October 23, the New York State Office of the Attorney General announced that it entered into a settlement with a group of companies and their affiliates (the "debt buyers") that bought thousands of defaulted mortgages secured by residential properties in New York, most of which were in a junior lien position at the time of their origination during the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. According to the AG's news release, many of these second mortgages had long gone unpaid because borrowers modified their primary mortgages during the financial crisis and holders of the second mortgages had stopped trying to collect the debts, deeming property values too low. The AG alleged that, beginning in 2019, the debt buyers filed more than 140 foreclosure actions in an attempt to enforce the long-defaulted second mortgages. In the foreclosure complaints, the debt buyers asserted that each subject loan had been in default for more than six years and sought repayment of the entire principal balance of the loan and all interest that had accrued since the alleged default date. Under New York law, the statute of limitations runs from each installment payment due on the loan. Therefore, each payment due on the loan becomes time-barred from a legal action to collect it six years after the payment is due. The AG contended that the debt buyers' foreclosure complaints were time-barred by the applicable 6-year statute of limitations for collecting mortgage debt and that the debt buyers violated the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, New York General Business Law § 349 concerning unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices, and the New York Debt Collection Procedures Act.
Under the settlement's terms, the debt buyers are required to pay $240,000 in penalties and provide more than $242,000 in restitution to affected borrowers. The debt buyers are also barred from seeking to collect time-barred debt in the future and must amend their demands in existing foreclosure cases to exclude any time-barred debt.
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On October 22, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed Senate Bill 806, which enacts the Artificial Intelligence Deceptive Advertising Act. The AIDAA prohibits an advertiser from creating and disseminating (or causing someone else to create or disseminate) an advertisement that uses synthetic content in a manner that creates a false consumer perception about the nature, origin, or authenticity of the goods or services being advertised without clear and conspicuous disclosure. The disclosure must state that the advertisement contains content that was modified or generated using artificial intelligence. The disclosure must be: (1) displayed in the first instance whenever the synthetic content is presented to the consumer; (2) presented in the same medium as the synthetic content; and (3) to the extent technically feasible, permanent or extraordinarily difficult to remove from the synthetic content. "Synthetic content" is defined as information, including an image, video, audio clip, or text, that has been significantly modified or generated by artificial intelligence.
The AIDAA does not apply to content that is: (1) evidently fictional based on the content or context of the depiction; (2) parody, satire, commentary, or criticism; or (3) limited to text.
The Pennsylvania attorney general or the appropriate county district attorney may bring a civil action to enforce the AIDAA. The court may issue an injunction to stop deceptive advertisements and impose civil penalties of up to $3,000 per violation as well as attorneys' fees and costs.
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On October 29, the attorneys general of 35 states and the District of Columbia announced a multistate settlement with a major auto manufacturer over its allegedly unlawful sale of consumers' private geolocation data and driver behavior data to third parties, including data brokers. This data was then allegedly resold to insurance companies that used it to set insurance rates for consumers, allegedly without the consumers' knowledge or consent. In addition, the AGs alleged that the manufacturer incentivized branded dealerships to, during the vehicle purchase process, enroll consumers in the connected services that collected consumers' personal data and that dealership employees allegedly accepted terms and conditions of the services on behalf of consumers without their consent. The manufacturer will pay a total of approximately $220 million to settle the allegations.
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