How a financial-services employer operates
A financial-services employer sells access to money and to insurance protection through physical places (branches, agency offices, advisory offices, contact centers and operations centers), through people who must meet the customer or the collateral (loan officers, appraisers, notaries, closers, adjusters, repossession agents, process servers) and through public offices it does not control (recorders, motor-vehicle departments, courts, sheriffs, secretaries of state). It collects its largest asset class, the mortgage and the consumer loan, through a legal process that runs on notices, filings, sales and writs. Every one of those places, people and processes was closed, capped, placed under infection-prevention and exposure-control conditions, moved online or forbidden by an order of a governmental authority between March 2020 and September 2021, and the terms on which the industry's loans could be collected were rewritten by Congress, the federal housing agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the "Bureau"), the governors, the legislatures and the courts for every day of the six quarters.1 The Suspension Clause asks whether "the operation of the trade or business" was fully or partially suspended; the statute is read element by element at /law/statute, and the fourteen functions below are the portions of the operation that the orders reached.
BR: branches and lobbies
The branch is where deposits are gathered, accounts opened, loans applied for, safe-deposit boxes visited, cashier's checks drawn and wealth and insurance appointments held. It operates by walk-in traffic and staffed teller lines. An order that confines the public to the home, permits the branch only under an essential-services designation, conditions it to drive-through and ATM operation, caps its occupancy, or imposes workplace infection-prevention and exposure-control requirements (screening, distancing and face coverings for every teller and customer, with entry refused to a person without one) changes what the branch does, how many people can be in it and how long each transaction takes.2
AT: ATM, drive-up and cash logistics
Cash reaches branches and ATMs by armored carrier; ATMs are serviced by technicians; drive-up lanes are staffed. The essential-infrastructure designations permitted those movements under the stay-at-home orders only as exceptions to the confinement of everyone else, and the workplace infection-prevention and exposure-control orders (face coverings, screening and distancing) applied to the vault, the lane and the servicing visit. In Vermont the critical-business list permitted banks "provided, however, routine retail banking operations shall be limited to transactions conducted through automated teller machines, drive-through services and online and telephone services" (Addendum 6 to Executive Order 01-20, critical-business list item (p), Ex. VT-010).3
CC: contact centers
Every institution's telephone and digital servicing runs through contact centers staffed in shifts at high density. The telework mandates of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Vermont and Kentucky emptied those floors by order; the reopening orders capped them; the winter orders emptied them again; and the infection-prevention and exposure-control orders of 2020 and the third quarter of 2021 (face coverings, screening, distancing and, in 2021, written exposure-prevention plans) governed every seat that remained.4
CL: consumer and auto lending
An auto loan is made at a dealership and perfected at a motor-vehicle office by title and lien recording; a consumer loan is made in a branch or online and, when it fails, collected by garnishment, repossession and suit. Dealerships were closed as non-essential retail in the spring of 2020 in most States and confined to online sales in Honolulu; motor-vehicle offices closed in at least twenty States and the District in March 2020 and ran by appointment into 2021; Illinois suspended every vehicle repossession from March 27, 2020, Maryland barred self-help auto repossession from April 3, 2020 to August 15, 2021, and Alaska barred motor-vehicle repossessions to June 30, 2020; garnishments were barred in Illinois, Washington and New Mexico for periods running to June 25, 2021, into 2021 and August 2, 2021.5
ML: mortgage lending
A mortgage is originated in a branch or a loan office, underwritten on an appraisal made by a licensed appraiser who inspects the house, closed before a notary at a title company, recorded at the county recorder and sold to the Enterprises or to an agency under its purchase conditions. Showings were barred in Nevada, Vermont, Michigan and Washington; appraisers were confined by the stay-at-home orders and the federal agencies deferred appraisals for 120 days and let the Enterprises accept exterior-only and desktop reports; recorders closed their counters in Maricopa, San Diego, Dallas, Montgomery (Pennsylvania), Fayette, Cook and other counties and took e-recordings or mail only; twenty-five States rewrote the law of notarial acts within weeks of the closures; and Nebraska's Governor recited the reason in his own order, that closings "require physical presence."6
BL: business lending and deposits
Commercial and small-business loans are made to the restaurants, retailers, gyms, hotels, contractors and manufacturers whose own orders are catalogued on their industry pages (Restaurants and Food Service; Retail Trade; Fitness, Arts, Entertainment and Sports; Hotels, Travel and Tourism; Construction; Manufacturing); commercial deposits follow their receipts. The Paycheck Protection Program, administered through this industry from April 3, 2020, was a federal program whose rules fixed what a lender could do and when; the utility-shutoff and commercial-eviction bars of New Jersey, New York, Arizona, Oregon and the District reached the collateral and the tenants of the industry's commercial borrowers; and the District's Act 23-286 compelled every regulated servicer to grant 90-day deferments on commercial and residential loans alike.7
SV: servicing, forbearance, collections and the moratoria
A servicer collects payments, advances taxes and insurance, reports to the credit bureaus, works with delinquent borrowers and, when a loan fails, gives notice, files, sells and evicts. Congress ordered forbearance on attestation and current reporting of forborne accounts; Congress and the federal housing agencies forbade every foreclosure on a federally backed mortgage from March 18, 2020 to July 31, 2021 and every foreclosure-related eviction to September 30, 2021; the CDC forbade residential evictions nationally from September 4, 2020 to July 31, 2021 and again from August 3 to August 26, 2021; the Bureau made the CDC order a condition of every debt collector's communications from May 3, 2021 and, from August 31, 2021, barred the first foreclosure notice through December 31, 2021; and the States and their courts stayed foreclosures, evictions, sheriff's sales, writs and garnishments on their own calendars, several to dates after September 30, 2021.8
IN: insurance
An insurer earns premium on policies whose exposure bases are miles driven, payroll and receipts, adjusts claims by inspection, and cancels for nonpayment under statutory notice rules; an agency earns commission on placement and renewal. The insurance regulators of at least thirty-one States and the District issued grace-period, cancellation-moratorium, premium-refund or operating instruments between March 12 and April 15, 2020, several with the force of law; California ordered refunds of premium for March and April 2020 in seven lines and ordered further returns in 2021; Delaware forbade every lapse for nonpayment to July 13, 2021; New Jersey directed insurers to refrain from cancelling for nonpayment to January 1, 2022; Maine declared an insurance emergency that ran to July 31, 2021; and every health insurer and plan was bound by the federal testing and vaccine coverage mandates, the tolling of every COBRA and claims deadline, and the American Rescue Plan Act's COBRA subsidy from April 1 to September 30, 2021.9
WM: wealth management and advisory
Advisory and brokerage fees are earned through customer meetings, seminars, branch-based representatives and supervised registered persons. The stay-at-home and gathering orders ended the seminar and the in-person review; the Securities and Exchange Commission's exemptive orders moved fund boards and filings online; FINRA's remote-inspection rule governed every branch inspection for 2020 and 2021; and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's no-action letters carried registrants' remote operation to September 30, 2021.10
MK: marketing, seminars and member meetings
Credit unions hold annual member meetings; banks hold shareholder meetings; advisers and agencies hold seminars and community events. The gathering caps of every State ended them in 2020, and the Comptroller of the Currency's meetings rule of May 28, 2020 moved them online; OCC Bulletin 2020-51 and the National Credit Union Administration's Letters 20-FCU-02 and 20-FCU-04, guidance cited here as context, announced and carried the virtual-meeting practice through 2021.11
HR: hiring, licensing and examinations
The industry hires and licenses loan originators, insurance producers, appraisers and registered representatives through examinations administered on fixed dates in test centers and through State licensing counters. Prometric announced the closure of every United States test center from March 17 to April 30, 2020 under the State closure orders; Maine's Bureau of Insurance issued temporary producer licenses because its examination centers were closed; Virginia's Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation and California's Department of Consumer Affairs waived credential and examination requirements into the third quarter of 2021; USCIS announced its closure to the public from March 18 to June 4, 2020, the Department of State suspended routine visa services on March 20, 2020, and DHS announced the deferral of the Form I-9 physical-inspection rule in every quarter.12
OP: back-office operations and supervision
Operations centers process payments, items and exceptions; supervision runs on examinations. The Federal Reserve announced on March 24, 2020 that it was reducing examinations and on June 15, 2020 that it was resuming them off site; the NCUA announced a strict offsite policy for its staff on March 16, 2020 and, by Letter 21-CU-06 of July 19, 2021, a Phase 1 return to on-site operations only where conditions had "sufficiently moderated" (supervisory announcements, cited as the supervisors' own record of the regime and not as orders); Montana's Banking Commissioner permitted every State-chartered bank and credit union to close any office from March 13, 2020 to July 12, 2021; Nebraska waived its bank examination and cash-count rules from April 1, 2020 to June 1, 2021; and the workplace standards of Virginia, California, Oregon and Washington and the New York HERO Act plans governed every operations floor through the third quarter of 2021.13
WF: workforce availability
The workforce is branch-based and office-based, commutes by transit in the largest metros, has school-age children and lives under the same stay-at-home orders as the customer base. The school closures of 2020 and the school face-covering and quarantine orders of the 2021-22 year removed parents from the branch; the Families First Coronavirus Response Act's leave mandate compelled the employer to pay absences for quarantine and school closure from April 1 to December 31, 2020; the isolation and quarantine orders removed exposed and infected employees for ten to fourteen days on every day of the six quarters; and the CDC's conveyance order (face coverings on every conveyance and at every transportation hub, with the operator's duty to refuse boarding to a person without one) governed every commute from February 1, 2021.14
CB: the customer and member base
The industry's customers are the households and businesses of every other industry and every level of government. Their confinement, closure and re-closure delayed, interrupted or terminated the deposits, loan applications, closings, premium payments and advisory meetings through which this industry earns its revenue, and under Q&A-12's logic and the statute's text an order that confines the customer or closes the business is an order limiting commerce, and a transaction suspended because of it is suspended due to that order.15
Revenue lines, seasonality and geography
Revenue is net interest income, servicing fees, origination and gain-on-sale income, deposit and card fees, premium and commission, and advisory and brokerage fees. The mortgage-origination calendar peaks in the spring and summer; auto lending follows dealer traffic; insurance renewals run on policy anniversaries; the tax-refund season drives deposit and consumer-lending traffic in the first and second quarters. The industry is concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas, in leased towers and branch networks served by transit, where the local orders inventoried below were densest and lasted longest, and it is present in every county through the branches, agencies and credit unions that serve them.16
The counterparty map
Customers and members in every industry: the State and local stay-at-home, closure, capacity, face-covering, exposure-control and vaccination orders on their persons and premises (the fifty States and the largest metros, below). Dealers and real-estate brokers: the retail-closure orders, the showing bans and the essential-services lists that confined their work to appraisal and title (the counterparties, below). Appraisers, title companies, notaries, recorders and motor-vehicle offices: the stay-at-home orders, the recorder and motor-vehicle closures, the notarial emergency acts and the federal appraisal deferrals (the sector regulators, below). Courts and sheriffs: the judicial emergency orders of every State and the federal courts staying foreclosures, evictions, writs, sales and garnishments (the sector regulators). The Enterprises and the federal housing agencies: the CARES Act, the eight extensions of the foreclosure moratoria to July 31, 2021 and the July 30, 2021 extension of the eviction moratoria to September 30, 2021 (the federal layer). State insurance and banking regulators: the grace-period, cancellation-moratorium, refund, forbearance and branch-closure instruments (the sector regulators). The SEC, the CFTC, FINRA and the NCUA: the remote-operation and meeting orders (the federal layer). Schools, child care and transit: the closure, face-covering, quarantine and conveyance orders on which the workforce's availability turned (the counterparties and the ecosystem).