Franca Harris Gutierrez is Chair of the Financial Institutions Practice. She leads one of the country’s preeminent banking and financial services practices from the firm’s Washington DC office, where she advises domestic and international banks, mortgage servicers, student loan servicers, consumer lending companies and emerging financial services providers on complex regulatory, enforcement and transactional issues. Ms. Harris Gutierrez is an active member of the firm’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Working Group and the FinTech Group. She joined the firm in 1999 from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

Practice

Ms. Harris Gutierrez has long represented financial institutions in their highest priority and most challenging regulatory issues and manages all aspects of her clients’ regulatory relationships. Her work before the Federal Reserve, OCC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) spans charter, license and other applications; bank capital and affiliate transactions; bank powers and activities; controlling and non-controlling investments; board governance; anti-money laundering compliance; responses to supervisory examination issues; and preparation of comment letters, analyses, and strategies for agency rulemakings.

Ms. Harris Gutierrez maintains an active enforcement practice and defends banks, card issuers, mortgage servicers, auto finance companies, student loan servicers and other financial services providers before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the federal banking agencies and other federal and state enforcement bodies including the New York Department of Financial Services. She has represented numerous institutions in enforcement actions by the CFPB, OCC, Federal Reserve and FDIC. She has deep experience with the most complex and high-stakes enforcement actions, often defending parallel proceedings by two or three federal regulators and numerous state regulators or attorneys general.

Ms. Harris Gutierrez is also a leader in the areas of retail financial services and consumer protection. She has advised large banks and newly regulated entities on adapting to the CFPB since its inception. She has counseled clients in preparing for and responding to some of the CFPB’s first supervisory matters, and she provided strategic and technical advice on the rulemakings mandated by Dodd-Frank. Ms. Harris Gutierrez regularly advises consumer financial services clients on a wide variety of legal issues, including the federal consumer financial protection laws, mortgage servicing rules, the Fair Housing and Equal Credit Opportunity Acts, state consumer protection and licensing laws, and data security and privacy laws.