Bradley Partner Jay Wright Quoted in Reverse Mortgage Daily on California Consumer Privacy Act

Bradley attorney Jay Wright was quoted in Reverse Mortgage Daily about how the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) could impact the reverse mortgage business. The law is intended to give California consumers more general say over how much of their personal data is collected and used by businesses. This has reverse mortgage professionals concerned with how they will properly vet a borrower based on identifiable attributes such as social security numbers and what to expect from other states with similar privacy laws.

“Masked data is permissible,” Wright said, referring to using only a partial Social Security number for borrower identification purposes. “You’re certainly prohibited from getting the entire Social Security number from a borrower through fear of potentially releasing other customer data as a part of that [inquiry]. You may need to tweak your policies and procedures to ensure they comply with CCPA.”

While there aren’t necessarily other laws with the scope of CCPA being deliberated in other states, there is momentum in other jurisdictions for further protection of consumer information, Wright explained.

“Maine and Nevada have passed state laws pertaining to privacy issues, and there are a number of states that have had consumer data privacy statutes that have been introduced and may be passed in the upcoming legislative sessions,” he said. “There’s movement in 11 or 12 other states. Obviously California is the most significant, and to date the toughest rules with which we’re going to have to contend.”

Still, regulations can change, and the reverse mortgage industry is still in a state of flux concerning compliance with these new privacy requirements. The significance of the topic is immense, and businesses in general are expected to spend billions of dollars in legal or regulatory compliance costs over the upcoming year, Wright added.

Anyone subject to upcoming privacy rules should have active conversations internally, and potentially with counsel to make sure that compliance with existing or upcoming privacy rules is maintained, Wright said.

The original article, “How a New California Privacy Law Could Impact Reverse Mortgages,” first appeared in Reverse Mortgage Daily on January 21, 2020.