Sept. 27, 2017, was undoubtedly one of the toughest days ever for South Bend, Ind.-based Meridian Title Corp.
It was that day that Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) publicly announced a consent order (CO) entered into between it and Meridian. By way of this Order, without admitting any liability, Meridian agreed to pay up to $1.25 million to past consumers to whom it had not provided notice of that fact that several of its owners also had an ownership interest in the Indiana title insurance underwriter whose policy had been issued to those consumers.
Athough Meridian denied any wrongdoing from that day on the company was tasked with complying with the CFPB’s consent order and simultaneously working to reaffirm its hard-earned reputation within the title industry.
Meridian CEO Mark Myers will take the stage on the first day of the National Settlement Services Summit (NS3) in Detroit (June 6-8) in an aptly focused session “Life After Enforcement” to discuss the CFPB’s action and its aftermath.
Other session panelists include Francis ‘Trip’ Riley, partner, Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr, LLC; and Leslie Wyatt, SoftPro’s director of regulatory compliance.
“The actions taken during these events can have tremendous long-term effects on the companies that are required to deal with them, hopefully having survived the assault. We also need to acknowledge that the financial burden may not necessarily be the most costly,” Myers, a first-time speaker at NS3, told The Title Report. “We know what that number is, it can be quantified. But there’s also your reputation in your local, regional and possibly even national markets, too, as well as the industry itself. That’s where things can become a little fuzzy, and ultimately challenging in regards to identifying loss, or at least costs.”
As part of the CO, Meridian also was ordered to establish, implement and maintain consumer protections, which include compliance testing policies, procedures, and standards, and the adoption and use of cutting edge technology designed to monitor daily compliance with the myrid of requirements built into Meridian’s forward thinking consumer protection processes.
“When something like this hits the media wires, most of us naturally think there must have been something that was being done with some level of impropriety. It’s human nature to do so, right or wrong,” Myers said. “Our legal team worked their butts off to get the bureau to understand our position, and to a great extent who we really were as a company, in an attempt to avoid the potential of a fine or a plenty. They were good enough to do that, and we felt strongly that we needed to convey this to the bureau, as well as to our long time and loyal customers.”
“ In the long run, though the bureau had set out certain issues in the CO, with which we disagreed, felt that the best approach to take at that point in time was to come to some kind of settlement that allowed us to get ahead of the issues and show the industry we were not afraid of taking the lead on consumer protection with state of the art compliance management protocol. Our our legal team was able to achieve this result and Meridian and its customers and the industry are better off,” Myers added.
Obviously, there were more steps involved. In what is a must-attend NS3 session, Myers and his fellow panelists will outline what companies need to do if they ever face a CFPB investigation, how it will impact operations and company mind-set, among other topics.
For more information on the 2018 NS3, including the agenda and a list of speakers, click here. You can register for NS3 online or click here to get information on how to register via mail, fax or phone.