After more than ten years and extended litigation to compel rulemaking, on March 30, 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued the final rule which implements the small business lending data collection requirements set forth in section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act (Section 1071).  The final rule, together with the comments, is just under nine hundred pages.[1]  Broadly presented, the final rule can be broken down into a series of questions to be answered.  First, are the lender, the borrower and the transaction covered by the rule?  Second, what information must be collected and reported?  Third, how is the information reported?  Fourth, when does the rule take effect?

What’s in fashion for factoring this coming spring? Quite a bit. This year’s trends show what we’ve all been keeping under wraps for the last two years, and we’ll be seeing some definite changes.

First up, a cascade of activity with more traditional bank lenders that retained customers during the pandemic based on regulatory allowances and readily available government funding may start pushing out underperforming loans.