Bert Spence discusses trends on the horizon for Birmingham’s banking world in 2020 and explains that regulating entities could also continue their 2019 trend of rolling back regulations in an article published in the Birmingham Business Journal on January 7, 2020.

“The Trump administration, so far, has shown a tendency to scale back regulation of business in numerous areas, and it is reasonable to assume the financial services industry will be hoping for more of the same in 2020, whether by executive-branch action, court action, or a combination of both,” explains Spence.

On another note, Bert Spence, an attorney at RumbergerKirk said the United States Supreme Court in October 2019 agreed to hear a case that challenges the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“The primary issue is whether the structure of the CFPB violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches by restricting the power of the president to remove the CFPB director,” Spence said. “Currently, the director can only be removed “for cause,” whereas, by way of comparison, even the highest-ranking members of the president’s cabinet serve entirely at the pleasure of the president, meaning he can fire them at any time, for any reason.”

Because of other language in the legislation that established the CFPB, he said it is possible that if the structure of the bureau is found unconstitutional, then the entire act that created the bureau is unconstitutional, which could conceivably invalidate essentially everything the CFPB has done in its nine years of existence.

Subscribers to the Birmingham Business Journal may view the full article here.