During a heated hearing last week on Capitol Hill, the nominee to become the next CFPB director, Kathy Kraninger, identified some of her broad priorities for the consumer agency if she gets the job. Kraninger appeared to embrace the industry-friendly approach for the bureau that has been set by her boss at the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, who is also the acting director at the CFPB. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, said Kraninger showed a philosophy ...
The CFPB will reduce the size of its three advisory groups to just six members each and cut annual operating costs by more than half, according to new advisory board charters obtained by Inside the CFPB from sources on Capitol Hill. The charters were signed by Acting Director Mick Mulvaney on June 5, a day before the CFPB announced it would fire all the serving members of the three panels, reconstituting them as “smaller” groups. Before Mulvaney took his ...
The CFPB last week named Paul Watkins, a lawyer in the Arizona attorney general’s office who helped establish a “regulatory sandbox” for the state, to lead the agency’s new Office of Innovation. Watkins was chief counsel for the Arizona AG’s 150-person Civil Litigation Division, which enforces state law related to consumer fraud, antitrust and other issues. He managed the nation’s first facility aimed at reducing compliance costs and burdens for new fintech ...
Industry groups recently wrote to ask the CFPB to educate consumers on specific topics such as arbitration and mortgage shopping. The letters were responses to the bureau’s request for information on its financial education programs. The bureau frequently creates and publishes educational content which covers a wide range of financial topics such as borrowing and saving. The bureau also cooperates with community organizations to disseminate ...
Mortgage-related consumer complaints filed with the CFPB have shown double-digit declines in every major category at the midway point in the year, according to a new Inside the CFPB analysis. At the six-month mark, consumer complaints about loan applications have seen the most significant decline, down 35.0 percent for the first half from the comparable period in 2017. On a quarterly basis, this type of complaint dropped 10.8 percent from 1Q18 to [Includes an exclusive chart] ...
CFPB Joins Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud. The CFPB recently joined a new Task Force on Market Integrity and Consumer Fraud, created by President Trump pursuant to an executive order. The task force is led by the Department of Justice, with the participation of the CFPB, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission. The task force will provide guidance for the investigation and prosecution of cases [Includes four briefs] ...
Prepayment speeds for VA and FHA loans are expected to converge due to changes in the refinance requirements for VA home loans, according to Wells Fargo Securities analysts.