In July 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published a rule in the Federal Register to prohibit providers of consumer financial products from “using a pre-dispute arbitration agreement to block consumer class actions in court.” The rule, scheduled to go into effect in March 2018, will affect various kinds of consumer financial transactions, and it has been the subject considerable debate and scrutiny.
We sat down with Michael Calhoun, an attorney and president of the Center for Responsible Lending (the policy arm of Self-Help Credit Union in North Carolina), for a Q&A on the CFPB’s new rule.