Breaking Down (Language) Barriers: A Practical Approach to LEP Borrowers
8 minute read | March.04.2019
Susanna Sedrak
Partner
Santa Monica
Susanna Khalil Sedrak advises on consumer and commercial financial services matters for an array of clients, including fintech companies, banks, mortgage lenders and servicers, consumer lenders and commercial lenders.
Susanna assists clients by providing federal and state compliance advice, including completing surveys on various mortgage, consumer, and commercial-lending topics, such as requirements related to fair lending, debt collection, preemption, bank partnership models, interest on escrow, borrower correspondence and navigating communications with Limited English Proficiency borrowers. She analyzes lending and servicing practices in light of federal laws such as the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), and Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and their accompanying regulations, as well as assists with preemption determinations.
She is a co-founder of Winnow, an innovative platform that allows financial and lending institutions to generate custom state regulatory surveys and searches by business type, license, product and geographic market. She is also the Chair of the Webinars & Roundtables Subcommittee of the American Bar Association's Consumer Financial Services Committee and was a member of the of Mortgage Banking Association’s 2014 class of Future Leaders.
She is a co-founder of Winnow, an innovative platform that allows financial and lending institutions to generate custom state regulatory surveys and searches by business type, license, product and geographic market. She is also the Chair of the Webinars & Roundtables Subcommittee of the American Bar Association's Consumer Financial Services Committee and was a member of the of Mortgage Banking Association’s 2014 class of Future Leaders.
Prior to joining Orrick, Susanna was a partner at Buckley LLP. Before Buckley, she was an associate at Winston & Strawn.
-
Her recent work includes:
- Operating as in-house counsel to a major mortgage lender and servicer for six months, fielding all aspects of mortgage lending from origination through default servicing
- Reviewing and overhauled origination disclosures for compliance with state and federal law on behalf of a national bank operating in all 50 states and D.C.
- Helping build a servicing compliance database for a state-licensed mortgage servicer, covering the gamut of servicing rules and requirements in all 50 states and D.C.
- Drafting preemption analysis of various categories of state laws in the post Dodd-Frank era for a national bank
- Responding to state and federal regulatory exams and audits, including responding to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Civil Investigative Demands and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) audit letters or other matters involving the Quality Assurance Division (QAD) or Mortgagee Review Board (MRB), and helping negotiate resolutions and settlements with those state and federal regulatory entities
