With Senate Republican opposition to the structure of the CFPB showing no signs of faltering going into Congress’ spring break, speculation has begun to shift to what might happen at the bureau should the GOP again succeed in blockading Richard Cordray’s nomination as head of the bureau. The Democrat-controlled Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee last week approved, as expected, President Barack Obama’s nomination of Richard Cordray to be the director of the CFPB for a full, five-year term...

The National Labor Relations Board announced earlier this month that it will not seek en banc rehearing in Noel Canning v. NLRB, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed that President Barack Obama’s Jan. 4, 2012, recess appointments of three members to the board were unconstitutional. “The board, in consultation with the Department of Justice, intends to file a petition for certiorari with the United States Supreme Court for review of that decision,” the NLRB said. The petition is due...

In a sign that fair lending enforcement may be about to flex its muscle in the auto finance sector, the CFPB last week issued a bulletin asserting the authority to hold indirect auto lenders accountable for illegal, discriminatory pricing markups, and providing guidance to such lenders within the bureau’s jurisdiction on how to appropriately handle fair lending risk. “Consumers should not have to pay more for a car loan simply based on their race,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The bureau’s bulletin “clarifies...

The CFPB now has the lion’s share of the oversight of the consumer debt collection market. Under the “larger participant” rule recently adopted by the CFPB, any firm with more than $10 million in annual receipts from consumer debt collection activities is now subject to the bureau’s supervisory authority. “This authority extends to about 175 debt collectors, which accounts for over 60 percent of the industry’s annual receipts in the consumer debt collection market,” the bureau said in its annual report to Congress on the Fair...

Reps. Bill Huizenga, R-MI, and David Scott, D-GA, both members of the House Financial Services Committee, have reintroduced the Consumer Mortgage Choice Act, H.R.1077, legislation that would ease the definition of points and fees that the CFPB articulated in its ability-to-repay final rule issued in January. The definition is a key factor in determining whether a mortgage is a “qualified mortgage,” which requires that fees and points not exceed 3 percent. Currently, the definition would make hundreds of thousands of...

The CFPB issued a proposed rule that would extend its supervisory authority to large nonbank student loan servicers, which it would define as those handling more than 1 million borrower accounts. With that threshold, the bureau estimates that it would have authority to supervise the seven largest student loan servicers. “Combined, those seven service the loans of 49 million borrower accounts, representing most of the activity in the student loan servicing market,” the CFPB said. The bureau currently oversees student loan servicing at...

The CFPB recently provided a sampling of the kind of input it has been receiving as part of its student loan affordability initiative.Some of the issues identified by the more than 500 responses received to date include refinance products and the capital markets. “A number of participants, including a publisher of websites on financial aid and a start‐up CEO, described how there may be significant demand for credit‐worthy borrowers to refinance their loans and lock‐in lower rates, but creative lenders face hurdles in the capital markets...

Late last week, the CFPB issue a final rule amending the Truth in Lending Act’s Regulation Z, stating that the 2009 Credit Card Act’s limits on fees apply only during the first year after an account is opened. The rule reverses a previous interpretation from the Federal Reserve back in 2011 which said that the act’s provisions (which limit fees a card issuer can charge to 25 percent of the account’s credit limit when first opened) also applied to fees charged before the account was opened...

The Federal Reserve Board Office of Inspector General is expected to produce the results of two CFPB-related audits by the end of this month, one of which is an evaluation of the CFPB’s contract solicitation and selection process. “This evaluation’s objective is to determine whether the CFPB’s contract solicitation and selection processes and practices are compliant with applicable rules established by the Federal Acquisition Regulation,” the OIG said in its latest work plan. “We plan to focus on a specific contract...