Episode 65: Smarter UDAAP Compliance Monitoring with PerformLine’s Expanded Rulebooks
PerformLine’s newly enhanced UDAAP rulebooks are designed to help compliance and marketing teams work more efficiently while mitigating more risk. In this episode, I sit down with Mike Gibney, Director of Client Solutions, about how these updates are making it easier for clients to stay ahead of deceptive practices in their marketing and communications.
By combining market trends, regulatory enforcement insights, and client feedback, the updated rulebooks offer broader coverage and faster deployment across channels. Built and refined with real-world testing, they help teams spend less time reviewing content and more time making informed decisions.
We discuss:
- How PerformLine tracks evolving deceptive trends to build its proprietary UDAAP rulebooks
- What makes the new rulebooks more efficient and comprehensive for content review and risk mitigation
- The role of technology like NLP and AI in speeding up rule creation and refinement
- A preview of what’s next—including rulebooks focused on identifying and understanding complaints
If you’re a PerformLine user and haven’t refreshed your rulebooks lately, now’s the time to reconnect. And if you’re new to the platform, this episode offers a clear look at how our rulebooks can streamline your compliance efforts from day one.
Show Notes:
- Schedule a demo and learn more about UDAAP rulebooks: https://lp.performline.com/request-a-demo
- Subscribe to PerformLine for more UDAAP resources and updates: https://lp.performline.com/subscribe-to-performline
- Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldgibney/
- Connect with Rhonda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhonda-mcgill/
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The state of marketing compliance and regulation is evolving faster than ever, especially for those in the consumer finance space. On the COMPLY Podcast, we sit down with the biggest names in marketing, compliance, regulations, and innovation as they share their playbooks to help you take your compliance practice to the next level.
Episode Transcript:
Rhonda:
Hey there, COMPLY Podcast listeners and welcome to this week’s episode. In this episode, I’m joined today by Mike Gibney, Director of Client Solutions at PerformLine, to talk about our newly updated UDAAP rulebooks. Mike walks us through what our rulebooks are, why we made these updates, and the impact they’re already having for our clients.Thanks for listening, and enjoy.
Rhonda:
Good afternoon, COMPLY Podcast listeners. Today, I am so excited to have with me someone who I’ve known for a very long time here at PerformLine, and that is Mr. Mike Gibney. So before we go into details and talk about what we’re going to be jumping into today, Mike, can you tell our listeners who you are and what you do here at PerformLine, and give us a quick look at what we’re going to talk about today?
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Rhonda. Before we get started, I’m just so happy to be doing this with you. Like Rhonda said, we go back quite a few years here at PerformLine. We used to work very closely together, and we don’t work as closely anymore, but it’s always a pleasure to come back and get to spend some time with you. So I’m just happy to be hanging out with you today.
Yeah, so as far as just a quick background, I’m the Director of Client Solutions here at PerformLine. I oversee a couple of functions at the company, but mostly focus on implementation, pre-sales, and overseeing the creation of our rulebooks, which I’m excited to talk about today.
Rhonda:
Yes, and it’s a lot to talk about, and I’m very excited. So for those that may not be familiar with what exactly our rulebooks are, can you tell them a little bit about that and why they’re so important for compliance teams?
Mike:
Yeah. So rulebooks are defined in different ways depending on our clients, but they really fall into a couple of main buckets.
One is the rulebooks that are generated by PerformLine, which my team oversees. These are curated rules with large libraries of terms behind each one of them, many of them rolling up to things like deceptive practices—which we’re going to talk about today with our new UDAAP rules.
But we also have rulebooks that are built out as frameworks for companies to insert their own requirements directly into—for things that need to be customized. A great example of that is the TILA frameworks that we have, where our clients are able to deploy a framework and insert the specific trigger terms that are applicable for their products and any versions of representative examples. They can insert those right into our rules and quickly deploy them into our platform.
The last piece of rules for our clients is their own custom guidelines. Most of our clients come to us with, whether it be compliance guidelines or legal—simple do’s and don’ts for creating marketing copy, things like that. These are really the checklists that many of our clients are using to manually go through content today.
What we do at PerformLine, when they’re implemented into our software, is we take those checklists and we build out automated rules. And we deploy those right in the platform so that PerformLine is scanning and assessing assets just like those compliance professionals would have been doing on their own.
Rhonda:
Well, that’s cool. There’s a lot to them. Yeah, and you know, when I was on the compliance side of the world, UDAAP was always one of those weird, vague things. And I know you guys recently just made some updates to the UDAAP rules. So what drove those latest updates to the UDAAP rulebooks specifically, and what makes it different from the previous ones?
Mike:
Yeah, so UDAAP is always a fun one at PerformLine because it is so murky in nature. It’s a broadly defined set of rules that the government can use to enforce any kind of deceptive practices or content that they’re seeing.
So really the problem that we are faced with in helping our clients is demystifying the regulation and being able to apply it to real-world examples.
What that means for UDAAP is not necessarily going piece by piece through the regulation—while we do do that—but the main component is actually looking at the trending deceptive practices that are being used in the market today and helping our clients identify that type of language in their content, which, if present, could lead to a UDAAP-style enforcement.
So UDAAP is exciting because, like I said, it’s not just piecing apart the regulation itself, but it’s really looking out into the market and seeing what are the trending deceptive acts and practices—or dark patterns, we hear a lot—that are being used today that could get somebody in trouble in some kind of UDAAP enforcement.
Rhonda:
So they’re like constantly evolving. It’s just never going to be static. So it’s not like, oh, we’re just going to slap those rules in there and those are going to be there for the next 15 years. These are going to continuously evolve. And I’m assuming, help avoid a client from getting something that could potentially be considered a false positive or whatever.
Mike:
That’s exactly right. So whether there are nefarious folks out there on the web or social media posting content using new deceptive tactics that we haven’t seen before, it’s our job to kind of get ahead of those and get a sense as to what’s going on. And then, certainly, as just things evolve, and there are folks just making honest mistakes in their content, we need to make sure that we’re staying ahead and being able to identify any of those actions as well—and they’re always changing over time.
Rhonda:
That’s appreciated, I’m sure, by clients, because you’re taking more of that proactive approach and allowing them to really jump in there and be two steps ahead.
Mike:
Absolutely. With the breadth of clients that we have now and just the amount of years that we’ve put into this industry, I’m really proud of essentially just the ear to the ground that we have on all this. The community that surrounds us—we’re always working with our clients to see what certain things are starting to pop up and become a trend before maybe a lot of other people even realize.
I think that we’ve got a great community around us, as well as the technology that we use internally at PerformLine, to really stay ahead and take more of a proactive approach to helping our clients mitigate UDAAP risk in this case.
Rhonda:
So can you give us a little sneak peek behind the curtain and tell us a little bit more about how these rulebooks are actually created? And how are you guys refining them?
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said just before, we really are always listening to the needs of our customers.
The first one is through those regulatory enforcement actions and penalties, as well as bulletins and updates from regulatory bodies. Certainly, with this administration, we’re paying even closer attention to these bulletins and enforcement actions from the states that are coming out. Now that we’re seeing the federal level may slow down a little bit, we’ve opened up our listening and are staying pretty tuned to states like California and New York.
We’re also doing industry analysis through trends in complaint databases. A good example of that is the Consumer Financial Complaint Database, which is still very much up and running. We see thousands or hundreds of thousands of complaints come in there very regularly, and we’re always looking in there to see what are the trending deceptive acts and practices from the consumer’s point of view.
And the last piece that we’re listening to, to start indicating when we need to build new rules, is getting direct feedback from our clients and users right in our software. We’ve got a great community, and we stay pretty closely in touch with all those folks.
Rhonda:
Definitely have a great community.
Mike:
Yeah, yeah. I’m sure a lot of your listeners are very familiar with the folks that are on here.
As far as the creation process, we’ve always used technology to fuel the creation of our rules and the terms and phrases that are put into those rules. Classically, we’ve always used natural language processing techniques that allow us to take large bodies of text—whether it be marketing content or complaints—and analyze and distill it down to the actual terms and phrases that would possibly indicate a deceptive practice for something like UDAAP.
With the advancements in AI today, certainly, generative AI is a fantastic tool for doing language processing—that’s the core function of it, really—so it aligns really well with solving the problem of how many different ways someone can say something deceptive or abusive.
At the end of the day, whether we’re using natural language processing like we have for years, or our new AI tools, something that really makes PerformLine stand out—and why we’ve always been ahead of the curve—is being able to test all those terms in such a large database of real-world marketing assets.
We evaluate whether the AI or NLP output generates false positives, whether it can be acted upon, and whether it misses anything. We have a large content database to check those against, plus the industry professionals and expertise at PerformLine. So we still have that human touch of content review before we’re ready to say, “Yes, this is a rule we feel confident in pushing out to our clients.”
It’s that large sandbox we have—using cutting-edge tech like AI to build a foundation, but then testing and vetting it through proven expertise—that sets us apart.
Rhonda:
So the human touch is still there.
Mike:
Absolutely.
Rhonda:
So let’s talk a little bit about the impact. What kind of impact have these updates had so far for clients that are using these new rulebooks?
Mike:
Yeah, so we’ve had some early adopters of our new UDAAP rules that we published just a couple of months ago. What they’re seeing is, one—we greatly expanded the number of terms and phrases. Many times, we saw an increase of deceptive terms and phrases go up by over 3,000 to 4,000 new phrases they were able to upload into their application.
The first impact is that we’ve cast a much wider net in their ability to observe these deceptive practices across all their content—web, social media, emails, contact centers, documents—everything.
I’m also proud to say that with that expanded breadth, we’re seeing a reduction in false positives. In some cases, like in our test environment, we saw a reduction of false positives by over 80% for some specific verticals. So we’re talking about more terms, greater coverage, but also more refined results.
Rhonda:
So with that said, I’m going to assume this is just the beginning. So what’s next for PerformLine’s rulebooks? You’re in UDAAP now, but I’m sure there are others you’re teeing up to refine as well?
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely. PerformLine has classically been very focused on regulatory acts and building out rules for those specifically. I’m proud of what we’ve done on UDAAP, Truth in Lending, Fair Lending, and others. Many of these rules are used by our clients today.
Going forward, what I’m really excited about is building out new rulebooks that solve problems outside of just the regulatory landscape. One big one we’re working on right now is building out a robust rule book for monitoring complaints.
Many of our clients today are focused on identifying consumer complaints—whether in contact centers, social media, or the web. We want to not only flag the complaint, but tell you why the customer was upset.
Rhonda:
I love it. That’s a game changer.
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely.
Rhonda:
There’s a complaint—but why?
Mike:
Yeah. Was someone concerned about fraud? Did they think there was a data breach? Did they have a poor experience with a brand rep? We want to not only pinpoint where complaints are happening, but why they’re happening. Then our users can layer PerformLine into their strategy for customer interaction in a whole new way.
I’m excited about that one—and there’s more to come. The same folks who lead our UDAAP rule book efforts have been talking to our sales and client success teams to understand what prospects and current users are struggling with today. We’re solving for those needs.
Rhonda:
That’s amazing. I can’t wait. I think there are some really great things coming.
So before we wrap up, do you have any final advice—any key takeaways you want to leave with our listeners? I’m going to turn the floor over to you.
Mike:
Yeah, happy to do kind of a PSA. I’m hoping what listeners are taking home is that things are changing—and often faster than ever before. We’re working our hardest at PerformLine to stay ahead and proactively flag new compliance violations—and, in the future, complaints too.
If your rules haven’t been updated recently and you’re a current PerformLine user, maybe you haven’t done a big update in the last 3 to 6 months, this is your cue to get in touch with your Client Success Manager and say, “Hey, what’s new?” I guarantee we’ve got something new for you.
Rhonda:
That’s great!
Mike:
And for anyone not using our rulebooks today—or maybe not even using PerformLine—there’s a lot more we can share. Feel free to give us a call, reach out through our website, or connect with someone you know at the company. There’s a lot we can walk you through directly in the platform.
Rhonda:
Absolutely. And I know we’re always happy to do a demo to walk folks through how the platform works—and definitely how some of these rulebooks can enhance the compliance monitoring experience.
So with that said, Mike, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. I’m going to let you get back to work—I know you probably have plenty to do—but thank you again. I can’t wait to see what you and your team have in store for us here at PerformLine.
Mike:
It was a pleasure chatting with you. I always enjoy spending time with you—this was great. Thank you so much.
Rhonda:
And we’ll be doing it again soon, I hope.
Rhonda:
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of the COMPLY Podcast! As always for the latest content on all things marketing compliance you can head to performline.com/resources. And for the most up-to-date pieces of industry news, events, and content be sure to follow PerformLine on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next time!
