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What is Going on at the CFPB: Funding, Furloughs, and APOR

Written By Richard Horn

What is going on at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) lately? It is enough to make your head spin. The latest round of news started back on November 10, 2025, when the CFPB notified the district and appeals courts in its NTEU v. CFPB lawsuit that it anticipates running out of funds in early 2026 (which I wrote about here). This has spurred a flurry of recent activity in the case, which is increasingly becoming a legal fight about the CFPB’s funding. I’ll describe that below. In addition, based on recent media reporting, it appears that the CFPB is gearing up to shut down, including furloughing staff, while simultaneously making some other moves that give the appearance it is planning to continue its activities. I’ll cover those developments as well. And I’ll also provide some thoughts on what all of this means. So, please read on!

Funding: The NTEU Lawsuit Begins a New Chapter of Litigation

On November 21, 2025, the CFPB filed a significant notice in its NTEU lawsuit (which I’ve written about recently here), under which the CFPB is subject to a preliminary injunction preventing it from taking certain steps to shut down the agency, including terminating staff and contracts. In the notice, the CFPB informed both the District Court and the Court of Appeals that the Acting Director sent to the President and Congress a report that is required under the Dodd-Frank Act (12 USC 5497(e)(1)(B)) notifying them of a determination that the agency does not have sufficient funds to operate in 2026. 

Read more at CreditandCollectionNews.com

Top 10: Global FinTech Hubs

Explore the top fintech hubs of 2026, from London’s Revolut to New York’s Mastercard, to see why these global cities are dominating the future of finance

Global fintech has become a truly borderless industry, with innovation and capital flowing rapidly between mature markets and fast‑growing emerging economies. 

Payments, neobanking and digital infrastructure are now built for global scale by default, enabling consumers and businesses to transact almost instantly across currencies and jurisdictions. 

The hubs below stand out as some of the fastest‑growing and most successful because they combine deep financial sectors, engineering talent and pragmatic regulators that actively engage with new business models. 

Together, they host many of the world’s most influential fintech founders and platforms, whose products shape how money moves in 2026.

Read more at FINTECH MAGAZINE

One major buy now, pay later company has a new target: Paying your monthly rent

Americans have historically turned to buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing to cover the cost of everyday expenses like groceries and consumer purchases such as clothing and furniture. Now, some of these lending companies are turning their attention to a bigger expense: Monthly rent. 

A new BNPL option from fintech company Affirm will give renters the option to break up their rent into two equal payments instead of a single lump sum payment. 

Affirm, one of the biggest BNPL companies, told CBS News the service is starting as a limited pilot program through a partnership with New York-based company Esusu. The latter company reports consumers' payment information to the major credit agencies, according to its website.

Read more at CBS NEWS

Benign U.S. Credit Backdrop Faces AI, Consumer and Trade Risks

Fitch Ratings-Toronto-20 January 2026: The U.S. credit outlook is broadly benign entering 2026, supported by AI-led capex, easing monetary policy and strong fiscal support, says Fitch Ratings. Fitch forecasts GDP growth of 2.0% in 2026, with the Federal Reserve expected to cut rates twice in 1H26, lowering the policy rate to 3.25% by year end. Continued rate cuts should sustain favorable funding and liquidity conditions, driving modest declines in leveraged finance default rates through 2026.

AI investment is a key growth driver as data center, chip, and power infrastructure capex lifts private investment and equity wealth effects. However, concentration risks are rising given hyperscalers’ outsized, debt-assisted capex, raising bubble concerns and potential spillovers if funding appetite cools. Sector outlooks tied to data centers are mostly neutral, with improving prospects for U.S. data center REITs.

Read more at FITCH RATINGS

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How Banks Can Block Financial Scams Targeting Older Customers

Fraud against American senior citizens continues to explode. With proliferating headlines about “pig butchering” and other scams, major banks are stepping up anti-fraud efforts. What steps should your bank or credit union take to address this burgeoning customer risk and protect your customers?

Need to Know:

• In 2024 people 60 or older filed 147,127 elder fraud complaints, with losses totaling around $4.9 billion, according to a 2025 report by the FBI.
• Both complaints and losses are skyrocketing: Complaints rose 46% over 2023 and losses increased by 43%.
• Fraud runs the gamut from phishing, spoofing and fake tech support calls to romance scams preying on the lonely.
• New research from Keynova pinpoints key tools that banks can help family and other trusted parties prevent and detect fraud patterns.
• Innovative programs include Huntington Bank’s Caregiver Banking, and similar offerings from Wells Fargo and KeyBank.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Mark Cuban warns 5 key industries could crumble in the next recession

When the economy starts to wobble, investors often look to people who've already lived through multiple boom-and-bust cycles. Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is one of them.

Across interviews, podcasts, and posts on social media, Cuban has repeatedly flagged certain industries and business models that tend to crack when consumer spending tightens, capital dries up, or technology shifts too fast.

Taken together, his comments point to five areas investors may want to watch closely heading into the next recession.

1. Media sector

Cuban has been unusually blunt about the media business. In a 2025 interview with Semafor, the former "Shark Tank" co-host, who actually started his career in media, called it "the worst industry in the history of industries."

Read more at MSN

Have a tax law question?

Our #IRS Interactive Tax Assistant has answers.

Watch this short video to learn more:

https://youtu.be/y6HkaBkdKdU

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WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service encourages all taxpayers to create an IRS Individual Online Account to access their tax account information securely online and to help protect against identity theft and fraud.

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Public Affairs Specialist

Tax Outreach, Partnership and Education

Email: jose.l.santiago@irs.gov

To Win Against the Big Banks, Smaller Institutions Must Stop Playing Defense and Go on the Offensive

Sean Sanchez faces the same challenges and frustrations that many retail banking executives live every day.

Megabanks like Chase, Bank of America and Capital One have tall stacks of marketing chips and they can lay them down all over the table, he explains. Institutions like his FirstBank, a $16.2 billion-in-assets institution headquartered in Birmingham, Ala., are playing the same game as the giants, but they don’t have the budgets to compete head-to-head.

And the major players don’t just have chips. They have data.

“They know who everyone’s best customers are, and they can slice and dice them, doing all the quantiling and getting really, really specific,” says Sanchez, EVP and head of client services. “And then they can throw a bunch of money and effort into messaging those clients.”

Read more at The Financial Brand

Economic issues to watch in 2026: BROOKINGS

Health care and nutrition assistance changes

Legislation enacted in 2025 made deep cuts and major structural changes to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With some of these policies taking effect in 2026, I’ll be watching how they’re implemented and how they impact health coverage, food insecurity, and financial hardship.

Several of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) health care cuts take effect January 1, 2026, including policies making it harder for low-income people to sign up for ACA coverage and ending ACA tax credit eligibility for hundreds of thousands of low-income, lawfully-present immigrants. In addition, policymakers’ decision to let enhanced ACA tax credits expire—even as the OBBBA continued $3.9 trillion in other expiring tax cuts—will raise premiums starting in January. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that health care changes taking effect in 2026 will ultimately cause about 5 million people to lose health insurance; the first official data reflecting these changes, from the National Health Interview Survey, would typically come out this summer. Likewise, CBO projects that more than 2 million people will lose access to SNAP in a typical month as a result of OBBBA’s expanded work requirements; the first enrollment data reflecting these provisions should come out this year.

Read more at The Brookings Institution 

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Is the neutral rate of interest going to start climbing after years of decline?

Monetary and fiscal policymakers use a variety of metrics to inform their decisions, but among the most important is the neutral rate of interest, also known by economists as “r*,” a number that isn’t directly observable. It represents the prevailing rate of interest in a smooth-running economy, and can be thought of as a target for policymakers. A new study presents a model of r* showing its decline in recent decades, as well as some potential signs that it may start creeping back upward in the coming years. On this episode of the Brookings Podcast on Economic Activity, Brookings Senior Fellow Wendy Edelberg speaks to the authors of the new study, Lukasz Rachel of University College of London, about his research and the implications for the economy.

Read more at The Brookings Institution 

Why we built an AI collections agency: CoraFone

We operate on contingency, not per-minute rates. We only earn when you collect.

Vertical AI became the gold rush of 2023. Every company suddenly had deep expertise in some industry they'd never worked in before. Collections was no exception.

The promises came fast. Vendors claimed they were built specifically for debt collection, with AI agents that could handle voice, SMS, and email seamlessly. Every vendor promised omnichannel. None delivered.

Two types of vendors emerged. Some were existing SaaS players who wrapped OpenAI or Claude with their old components and called it groundbreaking. Others were horizontal AI companies with impressive technology but zero collections expertise. They didn't understand compliance constraints, debtor psychology, or how debt recovery economics actually work.

Agencies, debt buyers and lenders would sign up and get robotic voices reading scripts, omnichannel features that never shipped past the demo, six-month implementations, and bills whether anyone paid or not.

Read more at CoraFone an AFSPA Endorsed Vendor

Equifax Sees Bigger Profits As Mortgage Credit Scores Shift

Equifax is positioned to earn higher profits from mortgages because competition in credit scoring is shifting business away from FICO and toward cheaper VantageScore products that Equifax sells, while mortgage volumes are starting to recover.

What is changing in mortgage credit scores

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is moving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the old Classic FICO model to a new framework that allows both FICO 10T and VantageScore 4.0 for mortgage lending.

FHFA is also implementing a “bi‑merge” approach (using reports from two of the three bureaus instead of all three) around the fourth quarter of 2025, changing how often and from whom lenders buy mortgage credit data.

How this benefits Equifax

Equifax jointly owns VantageScore with Experian and TransUnion, so every time lenders choose VantageScore 4.0 instead of a FICO score, Equifax captures high‑margin score revenue on top of traditional credit‑report fees.

Read more at CreditandCollectionNews.com

What’s Driving the Rapid Growth in ACH Payments

The ACH Network is reliable and ubiquitous. And over the past year, it continued to realize strong growth, both in the volume of payments and overall dollar amount. In 2025, ACH Network payment volume increased by roughly 1.6 billion, reaching a total of 35.2 billion, or an average of 141 million payments per day. In the same period, $93 trillion moved across ACH rails, up nearly $7 trillion from the prior year. While transaction volume grew by 4.9%, the total value of those payments increased by 7.9%.

This growth reflects the continued expansion of ACH use cases across the payments space. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Michael Herd, Executive Vice President of ACH Network Administration at Nacha, and Ben Danner, Senior Analyst, Credit and Commercial at Javelin Strategy & Research, analyzed the drivers behind this increase and explained why ACH is positioned to grow even further.

Embedded in the Economy

A highly efficient method for moving large volumes of payments, ACH continues to see growing adoption—including B2B payments, consumer bill payments, and account transfers. It remains a cost-effective option for high-volume payments between known counterparties.

Read more at Payments Journal 

Contact Chuck.Sockol@mcrc.biz to discuss your recovery needs

When Can Payments Trust AI?

Banks are no strangers to artificial intelligence. For years, machine learning and deep learning models have quietly powered fraud detection, transaction monitoring, and risk analysis. But the industry is now approaching a more consequential shift: agentic AI—systems that don’t just analyze data, but can act on it. With that shift comes a fundamental question about how much authority banks are prepared to give to machines.

Trust sits at the center of the debate. Is AI ready to be trusted with decisions that carry financial and regulatory consequences? That question was featured prominently in a recent conversation between Deepak Gupta, Chief Product Engineering and Delivery Officer at Volante, and Christopher Miller, Lead Analyst of Emerging Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research. And if the answer today is “not yet,” what needs to change for banks to get there?

Ways to Leverage AI

Across financial institutions, AI adoption is accelerating for a clear reason—efficiency. Internally, banks are under pressure to do more with fewer resources. AI is increasingly used to automate repetitive tasks, improve accuracy and consistency, reduce investigation backlogs, and bring greater predictability to operations that have been historically labor-intensive.

Read more at Payments Journal 

FDIC-Insured Institutions Reported Return on Assets of 1.27 Percent and Net Income of $79.3 Billion in Third Quarter 2025: FDIC

• Net Income Increased from the Prior Quarter, Led by Lower Provision Expense and Higher Net Interest Income
• Community Bank Net Income Increased from the Prior Quarter
• Net Interest Margin Increased from the Prior Quarter
• Asset Quality Metrics Remained Generally Favorable, Though Weakness in Certain Portfolios Persisted
• Loan Growth Continued from the Prior Quarter
• Domestic Deposits Increased for the Fifth Consecutive Quarter
• The Deposit Insurance Fund Reserve Ratio Increased 4 Basis Points to 1.40 Percent

WASHINGTON—The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today released the results of its latest Quarterly Banking Profile, a comprehensive summary of financial results based on reports from 4,379 insured commercial banks and savings institutions. In the third quarter 2025, insured depository institutions reported a return on assets (ROA) ratio of 1.27 percent and aggregate net income of $79.3 billion, an increase of $9.4 billion (13.5 percent) from the prior quarter. Strong net interest income growth and a reduction in provision expense, primarily related to last quarter’s large bank acquisition, drove the quarterly increase in earnings. 

Read more at FDIC

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Equifax Launches Credit Abuse Risk Model to Detect First-Party Fraud

As one of the three major credit bureaus in the United States, Equifax has broad visibility into consumer credit behavior. In recent years, one notable trend has been the rise of first-party fraud, in which consumers knowingly exploit organizational policies for financial gain.

First-party fraud, sometimes referred to as consumer-engaged fraud or friendly fraud, can take many forms. One commonly cited example involves shoppers who purchase items online with the intent to return them and pocket the refund.

Equifax is leveraging its access to credit data to address two other prevalent forms of first-party fraud: loan stacking and credit washing. Loan stacking occurs when consumers rapidly apply for multiple loans with no intention of repayment, while credit washing involves attempts to remove negative information from a credit report.

Read more at Payments Journal

Youth Financial Education and Its Impact on Adult Financial Decisions: FDIC

According to a recent study (PDF) by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, students who take personal finance coursework in high school are significantly less likely to grow into adults who are unbanked. And those who remain unbanked are less likely to express disinterest in opening a bank account. In other words, early exposure to financial education doesn’t just build knowledge, it shapes confidence, encourages engagement with the banking system, and helps set young people on a more secure financial path.

Money Smart has multiple resources that can assist with teaching young people about money:

Money Smart for Young People features four, free age-appropriate curricula that promote financial understanding and are specifically designed for Pre-K through 12th grade educators.

Money Smart Basics for Kids includes nine chapters, which introduces basic banking terms to children, who are beginning to learn about finances.

Read more at FDIC

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start-up, product development, and product evolution stages. PS

U.S. fintech could gain as Trump pushes affordability agenda, Citi says

Jan 22 (Reuters) - U.S. fintech stocks could gain an edge as Washington leans into a more populist, affordability-driven agenda ahead of ​the November 2026 midterm elections, analysts at Citigroup said in a ‌note.

President Donald Trump's latest policy push is prompting investors to reassess parts of the financial ‌sector, with his emphasis on affordability potentially opening the door for fintech challengers instead of traditional lenders, the brokerage said.

Companies tied to consumer-friendly credit and small-business services, including buy-now, pay-later providers Affirm and Klarna, and fintech firms SoFi ⁠and Block, are among ‌the best positioned to benefit, the bank said. Citi also flagged restaurant technology platform Toast and e-commerce firm Shopify as ‍potential winners.

Traditional lenders rallied after Trump's return to the White House in 2025 on expectations of a lighter regulatory touch, but his emphasis on affordability could shift the spotlight ​toward fintech challengers, the note said.

Read more at REUTERS

Commercial & small business lending: Obtainable & valuable to your credit union today

Over the past 20 years we’ve seen many credit unions step into the commercial lending arena and find success while minimizing risk. For some, it can certainly feel like a daunting task if you don’t have internal knowledge or experience at your credit union. Accordingly, NCUA regulations allow credit unions to ensure proper oversight to include the required expertise and experience needed to oversee a commercial lending program with the use of third parties.

The credit unions that are wading out into the commercial lending waters are experiencing increased revenue streams, additional opportunities to diversify their loan portfolios, increasing average deposit balances, the ability to gain new membership, increased fee income and diversification of the overall loan portfolio risk.

So, one might ask; “is it possible to get into commercial lending without the big internal salary expenses from hiring the expertise, knowledge and experience needed?” 

Read more at CUInsight

I asked ChatGPT the worst places to retire on a budget — these 7 cities came out on top

Retirement brings thoughts of a leisurely life doing the things you’ve always envisioned in post-work life, but reality may paint a different picture for soon-to-be retirees, especially for those without a substantial portfolio.

For retirees living on a limited budget, finding an affordable place to live is essential to avoid outliving their funds. Researching the top places to retire on a budget can help mitigate that risk. Unfortunately, people don’t always perform due diligence, which can hamper retirement life, according to The New York Times. Larger cities may seem ideal for retirement living, but they’re often exorbitantly expensive for many retirees, especially those relying on Social Security.

You may find access to quality healthcare in some larger cities, but the trade-off may be a higher cost of living — the very thing that many retirees may want to avoid. GOBankingRates asked ChatGPT for the worst places to retire on a budget. These are the seven cities the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot recommended retirees skip.

Read more at GOBankingRates

BofA is Building 150 New Financial Centers at $5 Million Each. Here's Why

In a recent episode of the Banking Transformed podcast, host Jim Marous spoke with Will Smayda, who oversees Bank of America’s 3,650 “financial centers”, about the bank’s counterintuitive $750 million expansion plan.

After reducing its traditional branch network from 6,000 to 3,700 locations, Bank of America is now pivoting, opening 150 new financial centers by 2027, each costing more than $5 million.

The financial centers reflect a fundamental shift in branch purpose: from transaction processing to advisory services. These centers serve as relationship hubs where 12,000 specially trained relationship bankers provide financial guidance.

Read more at The Financial Brand

Beyond Paper: Why More Businesses Are Turning to eChecks

Not long ago, payments meant paper, ink, and a trip to the mailbox. Today, consumers expect the opposite—transactions that are contactless, mobile-friendly, and processed in real time. With countless digital payment methods now operating smoothly and instantly, it’s no surprise that checks are being phased out in both commercial and consumer settings. Even the federal government—once one of the largest issuers of paper checks—plans to end their use for tax refunds and other payments.  

Still, a reliable and easily tracked payment system continues to have an important role in the modern economy. Today, electronic checks offer a contemporary twist on this trusted, secure method of payment. And for businesses of all sizes, cutting-edge solutions like Authorize.net can make the transition from paper to electronics seamless by offering secure, fast, and cost-effective eCheck processing.

What Is an eCheck?

An electronic check, or eCheck, functions much like a traditional paper check—customers provide their bank account, routing number, and payment authorization to complete a transaction. The difference is that everything happens digitally, typically through an online form that enables secure electronic processing.

Read more at Payments Journal

If Every Company Is Becoming A Fintech, What Does That Mean For Banks?

After more than 30 years in international and regional private banking at institutions including Coutts, Standard Chartered, HSBC and Lloyds, I’ve noticed a trend in wealth management that can no longer be ignored.

Back in 2019, Andreessen Horowitz’s Angela Strange predicted that “every company will be a fintech company.” While that idea remains to be proven, today there is an equally relevant question: What does “becoming fintech” actually mean for banks?

Historically, banks relied on a large network of branches, deposits and loans, and have been slower to capitalize on innovation.

However, this is changing.

Read more at FORBES

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