Maryland Legal Alert for Financial Services
Maryland Legal Alert - January 2026
In This Issue
How 2025 Transformed Digital Assets: What Business Leaders Need to Know for 2026
CFPB Withdraws Proposed Rule on Registry of Nonbank Form Contract Terms
Maryland Minimum Interest Rate for Escrow and Special Purpose Accounts
How 2025 Transformed Digital Assets: What Business Leaders Need to Know for 2026
In 2025, digital asset policy moved from enforcement-driven uncertainty toward more formalized rules across digital asset ecosystem. In this piece, we break down what actually changed, and what market participants should be doing now to stay aligned and avoid costly missteps in 2026.
For more information concerning this topic, please contact Julian A. Haffner
Contact Julian A. Haffner | 410-576-4243
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CFPB Withdraws Proposed Rule on Registry of Nonbank Form Contract Terms
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it has withdrawn its proposed rule titled Registry of Supervised Nonbanks That Use Form Contracts To Impose Terms and Conditions That Seek To Waive or Limit Consumer Legal Protections, which was originally issued on February 1, 2023. The proposed rule would have required supervised nonbank entities to submit annual reports describing the terms and conditions in their form contracts that purported to waive or limit consumer legal protections, as well as any court or arbitration decisions regarding the enforceability of such provisions. The CFPB would also have been required to publish this information along with identifying information about registrants.
CFPB cited two main reasons for withdrawing the rule. First, CFPB determined that the need for a registry of this nature was speculative. After reviewing public comments, the CFPB concluded that collecting extensive data about contract terms that are “typically lawful” would amount to regulatory overreach and would divert resources from efforts to identify actual risks to consumers.
Second, CFPB concluded that the potential public benefit of disclosing contract-term data did not justify the compliance burden associated with the requirement. The CFPB expressed concern that the publication would pressure regulated entities into revising form contracts that largely contain lawful terms, despite limited evidence that such an approach would provide meaningful benefit to consumers.
For more information concerning this topic, please contact Tamia J. Morris
Contact Tamia J. Morris | 410-576-4021
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Maryland Minimum Interest Rate for Escrow and Special Purpose Accounts
Maryland law requires depository institutions doing business in Maryland that make first lien residential real property loans and maintain escrow accounts for those loans to pay a minimum rate of interest on those escrow accounts. Maryland law also requires Maryland-chartered banks that offer certain short-term “special purpose” deposit accounts (for example, Christmas Club accounts) to pay a minimum rate of interest on those deposit accounts.
The minimum rate of interest on these accounts is based on the weekly average yield of U.S. Treasury Securities adjusted to a constant maturity of one year as of the first business day of the calendar year as published in the Federal Reserve Board’s “Selected Interest Rates” Table H.15. Because the Federal Reserve Board’s H.15 Table no longer includes a “weekly average yield” for the selected one-year securities, many institutions look to the weekly average yield interest rate data posted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (using the H.15 daily rate information).
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis displays a 3.51% weekly average yield for U.S. Treasury Securities adjusted to a constant maturity of one year (reflecting the weekly average yield for the weekly period ending on December 26, 2025, as posted on January 2, 2026).
For more information, contact Christopher R. Rahl.
Contact Christopher R. Rahl | 410-576-4222
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