Joshua C. Prever

Joshua Prever is a trial and appellate lawyer who focuses his practice on representing financial services companies. As a partner in Holland & Knight's Fort Lauderdale office, Mr. Prever represents Fortune 100 and 500 financial services companies along with midsize and boutique finance companies across the country in the mortgage servicing, FinTech, banking and nonbank lending spaces. Having defended his financial services clients in the courtroom, Mr. Prever puts the lessons learned from these lawsuits to good use by counseling his clients as they navigate a difficult regulatory and compliance landscape. Mr. Prever also has worked with financial services companies as both trusted outside and in-house counsel. After being embedded in the legal departments of both a federally regulated and a state licensed consumer finance company, his advice is grounded on the real-world operational issues, needs and business goals these institutions must address when adapting to new legal requirements.

A significant part of his practice is focused on preventing, and where necessary, resolving concerns raised by federal and state regulators. Mr. Prever's experience includes successfully counseling three large financial institutions as they worked with federal regulators to lift broad ranging consent orders. Through his work with financial institutions across the country, he has acquired extensive knowledge of default servicing and regulatory compliance issues concerning loan servicing in all 50 states, managing third-party vendors, creating and revising internal policies and procedures, and implementing regulatory directives from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC), Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) and a host of state regulators. He also routinely provides guidance and support to financial institutions in responding to attorney general requests, mortgage and loan servicing audits conducted by investors, and outsourcing of default services to servicers and sub-servicers.

In addition, Mr. Prever is an authority on an important legal innovation – remote online notarization (RON) – and its ability to add flexibility for the financial services industry and others in an increasingly remote working environment. He also counsels clients on the implementation of this new technology to ensure compliance with the patchwork of state laws and regulations governing RON usage. He works with clients on RON's interplay with the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, New York State Electronic Signatures and Records Act (ESRA), Illinois Electronic Commerce Security Act and other state laws to create electronic and digital signature processes allowing for fully electronic contracts – including residential and commercial loan agreements.

Mr. Prever is equally comfortable addressing issues before regulators as he is representing clients in the courtroom. He maintains an active litigation practice, including class actions, securities litigation, single-borrower actions relating to residential mortgages, commercial real estate cases, as well as other complex commercial litigation matters, insurance disputes, bankruptcy proceedings, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) inquiries and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) matters.

Outside of the law firm, he lectures and writes on a variety of topics concerning the mortgage industry and in particular RON innovations, the CFPB's ever-changing role in the mortgage and financial services industry, as well as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and Truth in Lending Act (TILA).

As part of an active pro bono practice, Mr. Prever successfully represented victims of political persecution who sought asylum in the United States after being forced to flee their country. He organized workshops enlisting dozens of lawyers to assist Holocaust survivors in obtaining restitution benefits through the German Government Ghetto Fund. He routinely serves as attorney and guardian ad litem for children in need. He is a board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters Miami and serves as the chair of the Leadership Counsel for Take Stock in Children Miami, an organization that provides deserving low-income high school students with mentors and college scholarships.