February 2012

As I have done for the past 16 years, I will again be co-chairing and speaking at the 17th Annual Consumer Financial Services Institute, sponsored by the Practising Law Institute. The event will take place on April 9-10, in New York City (and by live webcast and groupcast in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania) and May 3-4, in Chicago.… Continue Reading

Last December, we wrote  about the CFPB’s notice seeking public input on which regulatory requirements should be on the CFPB’s priority list for streamlining. One of the possible streamlining candidates identified by the CFPB was the Regulation E requirement to post an ATM sign about fees when such fees must also be disclosed on the ATM screen or in a paper notice.… Continue Reading

As we reported last week, the CFPB announced that it was wrapping up testing of its integrated mortgage disclosure prototypes and gearing up for the rulemaking process. Because the CFPB’s rule will have a significant impact on a substantial number of small business entities, the CFPB must convene a small business panel before issuing its proposal as required by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act (SBREFA).… Continue Reading

Coincidentally (or not), on the same day the CFPB launched its overdraft fee initiative, previously discussed, 250 national, state and community organizations and individual activists wrote the heads of the CFPB and the federal banking agencies to attack deposit advance products. Both the CFPB in its payday lending exam manual and the authors of this letter treat deposit advance loans as a kind of payday loan.… Continue Reading

Last week, Barbara Mishkin posted generally on the CFPB’s overdraft fee initiative. I found the CFPB’s prototype “penalty fee box” particularly interesting and have a few comments: 

  • While it is certainly possible that the CFPB will both require targeted disclosures and sharply circumscribe consumer choice, I take some hope from the penalty fee box disclosure that the CFPB will focus on requiring clear disclosure and continue to allow consumers a considerable measure of autonomy.
… Continue Reading

Back in December, the Bureau issued a notice asking the public to help it “identify provisions of the inherited regulations that the Bureau should make the highest priority for updating, modifying, or eliminating because they are outdated, unduly burdensome, or unnecessary.” (We discussed the notice in an earlier blog post [link.… Continue Reading

The CFPB is conducting this week its final round of testing in its “Know Before You Owe” project. Instead of asking for comments on side-by-side comparisons of prototypes for the same disclosure, the CFPB is asking for comments on one prototype of a RESPA/TILA integrated application disclosure and one prototype of a RESPA/TILA integrated settlement disclosure.… Continue Reading

Since the CFPB was launched, we have been predicting that overdraft fees would be among the CFPB’s priority items. With the CFPB’s announcement today that it has launched an inquiry into checking account overdraft programs, it’s clear our predictions were correct. The CFPB’s focus on overdraft fees is proceeding on several different fronts and we will share more detailed comments on the CFPB’s initiatives in further blog posts.… Continue Reading

After suggesting six possible markets for consumer financial products and services in which it might supervise “larger participants,” the CFPB has decided that, at least for the time being, it will only supervise “larger participants” in two of those markets, namely debt collection and consumer credit reporting. 

In issuing its proposed “larger participants” rule, the CFPB gave no explanation for its decision to include just the two markets. … Continue Reading

This morning, the CFPB released a proposed rule to define “larger participants” subject to its supervision and enforcement authority.  We will write more about this proposed rule after we get the chance to review it, but from an initial review of the press release, there are several interesting aspects to the proposed rule:

  • Initially, the CFPB is seeking to cover only “large” consumer reporting agencies and debt collectors, with revenue thresholds of $7 million and $10 million, respectively, to define the covered entities.
… Continue Reading