Widener University Commonwealth Law School and the Government Institute and the Business Advising Program are sponsoring a lecture presented by Nicholas Smyth, senior deputy attorney general and assistant director of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection and Seth Frotman, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center entitled Consumer Financial Protection in Pennsylvania: Student Borrowers and Beyond on March 19, 2019 from 5:00 PM-6:00 PM at Widener Law Commonwealth, Administration Building-A180, 3737 Vartan Way, Harrisburg, PA 17110.

Nicholas Smyth will analyze the structure and priorities of the Bureau of Consumer Protection and its recent work, including cases against Navient, Wells Fargo CashPoint, and a cooperative effort with three major retailers to reduce gift card scams. He will also discuss when the bureau uses its soft power to persuade companies to make changes to combat fraud (gift cards), when it partners with other state attorneys general to investigate massive companies (Wells Fargo), when it sues alongside other state and federal agencies (Navient), and when it sues on its own (CashPoint).

Attorney General Josh Shapiro appointed Smyth in July 2017 to start Pennsylvania’s first-ever Consumer Financial Protection Unit. He manages the bureau’s work involving consumer finance, such as student lending, mortgages, auto finance, payday lending, debt collection, credit reporting, debt settlement, and financial scams.

Seth Frotman will discuss problems with the higher education finance system.  He will focus on the public policy considerations that led to the current infrastructure and how the policies of the Trump Administration have pushed things from bad to worse. Also, he will outline the role states and consumer attorneys must play in building a new framework for consumer protection and student loans.

Frotman serves as the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Agency and is the nation’s leading expert on the intersection between higher education finance, consumer protection, and public policy. He previously served as assistant director and student loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he led a government-wide effort to develop consumer-driven policy reforms and protect millions of Americans with student debt.