Caroline M. Stapleton

Caroline M. Stapleton is an Associate in the Washington, D.C., office of Buckley Sandler LLP. Ms. Stapleton represents banks and non-bank financial service providers in federal and state regulatory and enforcement matters.

Ms. Stapleton regularly advises clients on compliance with a variety of consumer finance laws, including the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA), Truth in Lending Act (TILA), Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), and the Fair Housing Act.

In her consumer finance practice, Ms. Stapleton has worked with banks, savings associations, and nonbank lenders and servicers operating in a variety of spaces, including mortgage, credit cards, automobile finance, and student lending.  Her experience includes:

• Performing compliance risk assessments of institutions’ origination, servicing, and marketing activities
• Preparing entities for compliance examinations by federal and state regulators
• Providing guidance regarding compliance with specific regulatory provisions in the development or expansion of financial products and services
• Responding to and defending enforcement actions by state and federal regulators based on consumer finance-related allegations

Ms. Stapleton also has experience with a wide variety of federal banking statutes and regulations, including the National Bank Act (NBA), Federal Deposit Insurance Act (FDI Act), Bank Holding Company Act (BHCA), and regulations promulgated thereunder.  In her bank regulatory work, Ms. Stapleton has focused on questions regarding:

• The bank supervisory process at the state and federal levels
• How to respond to supervisory examination findings, including CAMELS ratings and Matters Requiring Attention (MRAs)
• Federal preemption of state laws applicable to national banks
• Permissible bank and bank holding company activities
• Treatment of confidential supervisory information (CSI)

Ms. Stapleton’s banking law practice additionally includes advising financial service providers on chartering options at the state and federal levels, including traditional state and federal bank and thrift charters, special purpose national bank charters for fintech companies and other qualifying entities, and alternative state bank chartering options such as industrial loan company (ILC), and industrial bank (IB) charters.

Prior to joining Buckley Sandler, Ms. Stapleton was an attorney-advisor in the litigation division of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), where she represented the OCC in civil litigation, bank receivership preparation, employment disputes, and other administrative contexts.

Ms. Stapleton received her J.D. from Duke University in 2011. During law school, she served as an Articles and Comments Editor for the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy. Ms. Stapleton received her B.A. from Duke University in 2007 (cum laude).