The CFPB made a big splash last week – perhaps the last of Richard Cordray’s career at the helm – by issuing its long-awaited payday lending final rule. Many observers watching the director for signs he will resign to run for governor of Ohio have speculated he has been hanging on at the bureau until this rule was formally promulgated. Now that it has been issued, the Cordray departure watch will resume. Under the new rule, there’s a full-payment test. Lenders are required to determine whether the borrower can afford the loan payments and still meet basic living expenses and major financial obligations. For payday and auto title loans that are due in one lump sum, full payment means “being able to ...

Organizations representing a variety of financial and business interests have jointly filed suit in a bid to deep-six the controversial arbitration rule issued earlier this year by the CFPB. The litigation was filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with the American Bankers Association, the American Financial Services Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, the Financial Services Roundtable, the Texas Association of Business, the Texas Bankers Association, and a coalition of chambers of commerce throughout Texas. The groups are challenging the constitutionality and legality of the CFPB’s rule. Their basic position is that the rule effectively precludes the use of arbitration agreements in disputes between consumers and providers of consumer financial products and services, and instead renders class-action litigation the ...

A new report from the CFPB Office of Inspector General suggests the consumer bureau may have been in too much of a hurry to get more examiners into the field, compromising the quality of their training and their effectiveness. The CFPB’s Supervision Learning and Development (SL&D) unit has taken steps to enhance the Examiner Commissioning Program (ECP) since its implementation in October 2014, according to the report. However, there apparently were some pretty big holes left. For starters, the OIG found some examiners appeared to be pursuing parts of the examiner program before they were fully prepared, which limited their likelihood of success and affected employee morale. “Further, when examiners require multiple attempts to pass ECP components, they are not ...

The CFPB needs to improve the way it informs recipients of its civil investigative demands (CIDs) of the purpose of its investigations, according to a recent report from the bureau’s Office of Inspector General.At issue are the CFPB’s internal guidelines for crafting notifications of purpose associated with CIDs. The guidance calls for broad statements of purpose, to allow for flexibility, the OIG noted. However, “The guidance does not expressly remind enforcement attorneys of the need for statements of purpose to be compliant with relevant case law on notifications of purpose, including any developments in such case law, or remind them to revisit the statement of purpose in a revised opening memorandum if the purposes of the investigation evolve.” The ...

Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 63 percent, favor having a panel of Democrats and Republicans running the CFPB, not a single director, according to a recent survey on financial regulation by the libertarian Cato Institute. Surprisingly, support is stronger among Democrats (67 percent) than Republicans (64 percent) for such a commission. But there’s more of a split when it comes to the bureau’s finances. A slight majority (54 percent) indicated Congress should not set the CFPB’s budget and should only have limited oversight of the agency. “Given that only 7 percent of the country has confidence in Congress, these numbers are not surprising,” said Emily Ekins, a research fellow and director of polling at the Cato Institute and author of the ...

Consumer complaints to the CFPB about credit reports jumped in the third quarter, during which the massive Equifax data breach occurred, and year over year, according to a new analysis by Inside the CFPB. Gripes to the bureau leapt by 53.4 percent from the second quarter to the third, our analysis found, and skyrocketed 86.2 percent from year-ago levels. Criticisms about credit reports went from 12,830 in the first quarter of 2017 to 19,685 in the second, to 29,466 in the third. And it may get worse before it gets better, as the bad news about the Equifax hack makes its way further into the general population.Equifax-related complaints rose 131.2 percent during the period ending ... [With exclusive data]

Did DoJ Opine on Ocwen v. CFPB? No One’s Talking. Earlier this year, Ocwen Financial asked Judge Kenneth Marra of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach Division, to invite the U.S. attorney general to appear and participate in the company’s challenge to the constitutionality of the CFPB.... Last Call for Public Comments on TRID ‘Black Hole’ Proposal. The industry has until 11:59 p.m. Oct. 10, 2017, to submit comments to the CFPB regarding its proposal to close the “black hole” associated with the bureau’s integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act....

The agency single-family MBS market continued cranking along during the third quarter of 2017, but other sectors in structured finance saw weakening issuance, according to an exclusive new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Some $407.55 billion of MBS and ABS – excluding collateralized debt obligations and agency credit-risk transfer deals – were issued during the third quarter. That was off 4.9 percent from the previous three-month period and it ... [Includes three data charts]

Requirements for asset-level disclosures for certain ABS fell off of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s most recent regulatory agenda but the issue remains on the regulator’s radar, according to industry participants. Asset-level disclosure requirements for MBS and ABS have been a concern since 2010 when the SEC proposed revisions to Regulation AB. Some of the so-called Reg AB2 revisions were ultimately finalized in 2014, establishing disclosure requirements for ...

Investor demand for non-agency MBS backed by re-performing loans has prompted an increase in issuance, with a new emphasis on deals that have credit ratings. Chimera Investment issued its first rated RPL transaction this week and MetLife Investment Management is preparing to enter the market as an issuer. “Rated RPL MBS has fundamentally changed the market,” Scott Waterstredt, a managing director at MetLife, said at the recent ABS East conference. He noted that ...