McConnell Wants to Make ‘Reasonable’ Reforms to the CFPB. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, told attendees at an American Bankers Association’s government relations event last week that the Dodd‐Frank Act was “a huge mistake,” and that Congress needs to mitigate the law’s harm to the banking industry – especially through the CFPB. “We need to change the structure of [the CFPB] to make it responsible to someone,” he explained. “We’ve said we need a supervisory board to which the director reports. We think the...

Tim Duncan, a former Treasury official who helped start the CFPB, is moving closer to launching a technology initiative that will help third-party lenders stay in compliance with upcoming agency rules.Duncan notes that come January of next year, wholesalers and correspondent buyers of residential loans will be responsible for complying with consumer protection laws even though they do not produce mortgages themselves through retail means. His web venture, The Consumer Protection Platform, is designed to protect loan...

David Silberman, the CFPB’s associate director for research, markets and regulations, told four House Republican members that the bureau’s previously announced arbitration study is proceeding, reiterating its now-common rejection of any applicability of the ruling in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board. The recent Canning determination “did not involve the CFPB and has no effect on the bureau’s work, including the statutorily-required study of mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements,” Silberman told the House...

The CFPB plans to spend a whole lot more in fiscal years 2013 and 2014 than it did in FY 2012, and a big chunk of that change is going to be devoted to supervision, enforcement and fair lending. In FY 2012, the CFPB budgeted just over $83 million for those three areas. For FY 2013, that is projected to leap to more than $132.8 million. For FY 2014, supervision, enforcement and fair lending will be earmarked more than $165.2 million. In every one of these fiscal years, SEFL categories have dwarfed all other CFPB programs except...

The Congressional Research Service recently reviewed the D.C. Circuit’s January 2013 decision in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board, and came to the conclusion that nearly all of the CFPB’s rulemakings could be validated by the Treasury Secretary, should President Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray as bureau director be similarly declared unconstitutional. If Director Cordray’s appointment was not valid, the only CFPB rules the Secretary could not ratify are its “larger participant” rules for...

The CFPB has proposed clarifying and technical amendments to its Jan. 10, 2013, final mortgage escrow account rule, which lengthens the time for which a mandatory escrow account established for a higher-priced mortgage loan (HPML) must be maintained. The rule also established an exemption from the escrow requirement for certain lenders that operate predominantly in “rural” or “underserved” areas. The proposed amendments clarify the determination method for the “rural” and “underserved” designations and keep in place certain...

Late last week, the CFPB issued another proposal to address questions regarding “qualified mortgages” and mortgage servicing that have come up since the agency first issued rulemakings on those topics in January. The new proposed rule addresses five topics, including debt-to-income ratio. Under the ability-to-repay rule, a lender may make a qualified mortgage, a loan for which certain features are prohibited and fees that can be charged are limited. The rule provides for different types of QMs, the main type requiring that...

The CFPB has issued two compliance guides for small entities that had to do with its escrow rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the ability-to-repay rule, both issued in January. The bureau said its goal with the guides is to provide an overview of the rules in a plain language and frequently asked question format, “which makes the content more accessible and consumable for a broad array of industry constituents, especially smaller businesses with limited legal and compliance staff.” The consumer agency also emphasized that...

Industry representatives are getting increasingly antsy about how big the CFPB’s consumer database is becoming. Reports have emerged that suggest the bureau has been demanding voluminous amounts of information from banks about credit cards and other financial products and services while also purchasing data from vendors about various financial products such as auto and payday loans. The CFPB is said to be purchasing some of this data from private companies, such as Experian, which reportedly is being paid up to $8.4 million for...

Sometimes the most significant thing to come out of an encounter with a newsmaker is not what he says but what he hears. Such was the case last week when CFPB Acting Deputy Director Steven Antonakes addressed attendees at the American Bankers Association’s government relations event in Washington, DC, and took questions afterwards. During the question-and-answer portion after his prepared remarks, one attendee told Antonakes that small banks in Oklahoma are exiting the mortgage business in a number of small communities over fears of potential...