This posting was written by Travis P. Nelson.

In a BNA Banking Report article, Reed Smith’s William Mutterperl wrote about the recent Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) enforcement action that applied the disparate impact theory of discrimination in finding that a group of white male borrowers and male-female married couple borrowers had been discriminated against. This latest enforcement action by the OCC creates a mine field for financial institutions, in which they face a no-win situation, caught between conflicting federal policies both designed to ensure equal access to credit for all consumers. Click here to read the entire article about this potentially precedent setting action.

Travis P. Nelson is counsel in the Financial Services Regulatory Group at Reed Smith LLP, resident in the Princeton and New York offices, and a co-leader of the firm’s Financial Institutions Enforcement & Investigations Task Force. Prior to joining Reed Smith, Travis was an Enforcement Counsel with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Treasury Department, in Washington, D.C. Travis is also adjunct faculty at Villanova University School of Law, and a frequent lecturer at national and regional banking conferences.