The Consumer First Coalition (CFC) represents a group of companies committed to combating new forms of fraud, protecting identities, and upholding the privacy protections that are a hallmark of the financial services industry.

In financial services, consumers have more choices from a wider range of providers than ever before. While this innovation is exciting and transformative, it has necessarily heightened consumers’ expectations of trust. The CFC works collaboratively with policymakers, federal agencies and industry stakeholders to drive policy outcomes designed to meet these expectations for their shared customers.

For example, the CFC is leading industry efforts and collaborating with industry partners to successfully implement an important new law designed to significantly reduce cases of synthetic identity fraud. Victims of this type of fraud are most often children and others with little or no credit history whose Social Security numbers (SSNs) are used by criminals to establish “synthetic” credit histories. Over time, these fake credit files are used to apply for and obtain credit.

Under the new law, financial institutions would be able to verify – with consumer consent – whether a given name, date-of-birth and SSN match with the Social Security Administration. With this extra piece of identity information, credit issuers will be able to stop the process of creating synthetic identities in its tracks and spare would-be victims from the nightmare of cleaning up a compromised SSN.

To learn more about synthetic identity theft, check out our resources section.

​Coalition Staff

​The CFC is led by Katie Wechsler and Doyle Bartlett. Katie is a partner of the firm Sivon, Natter & Wechsler, P.C. and specializes in financial services regulation and policy issues. Katie also serves as Of Counsel at the firm Squire Patton Boggs LLP(US). Previously, Katie was counsel at the Housing Policy Council. Doyle is Washington, D.C. Managing Shareholder of Gray Robinson, leading that firm’s government affairs and lobbying group. Doyle previously worked on Capitol Hill and for the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.

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