In late July, Director Watt issued a statement saying he had not “done anything contrary to law.”

The CFPB is creating a “disclosure sandbox” as its most recent step to encourage fintech innovation. Many are expecting the bureau to tackle the flawed no-action letter policy next. The CFPB recently published a revised policy for its trial disclosure program in the Federal Register. The new policy would streamline the application process, establish procedures for extending successful trial disclosure programs, and allow the CFPB to coordinate with sandbox ...

Democratic state attorneys general recently vowed to fill the void of the CFPB in fair lending enforcement if the bureau decides not to use disparate-impact analysis under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. “The attorneys general will not hesitate to uphold the law if CFPB acts in manner contrary to law with respect to interpreting ECOA or to fulfilling its Congressional charge to ensure nondiscriminatory lending to the residents of our states,” wrote 14 AGs in ...

The CFPB, together with four other federal agencies, last week affirmed it will not take enforcement action based on supervisory guidance. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., National Credit Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the CFPB said supervisory guidance does not have the force and effect of law and cannot lead to enforcement actions. “Examiners will not criticize a supervised ...

The latest CFPB supervisory highlights report found violations in the loss mitigation process and some foreclosure practices which officials determined are unfair or deceptive acts or practices. The report released earlier this month is the first one since Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney took the reins of the agency. The most recent supervisory highlights report was the summer 2017 edition issued a year ago. Attorneys said the report indicates that the supervisory ...

Three months after the CFPB fired all the members on its three advisory boards, the agency has reconstituted the panels with fewer members serving shorter terms. The CFPB recently announced nine members for the Consumer Advisory Board, down from 25 during former Director Richard Cordray’s tenure in the agency. Only one of nine comes from the consumer advocacy world – Liz Coyle, executive director at Georgia Watch, which describes itself ...

A recent report by a government watchdog highlighted the actions taken by Equifax and the CFPB during the year since the public learned about the credit reporting agency’s serious data breach. The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on the Equifax data breach, describing in detail how hackers exploited vulnerabilities in the Equifax system to gain access to sensitive personal information for at least 145.5 million individuals. According to ...

The CFPB should drop the current debt-to-income ratio cap and the so-called GSE patch from the qualified-mortgage definition, the Urban Institute recommends. The CFPB is required by statute to review the ability-to-repay rule, which includes the QM definition, and issue a final report on its findings by Jan. 10, 2019. One of the most important elements of the review could be the fate of the “GSE patch,” which is set to expire in January 2021, or on the day ...

A community bank in Texas and two DC-based nonprofit groups recently filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB’s sole-director structure. The State National Bank of Big Spring, 60 Plus Association, and Competitive Enterprise Institution originally filed a lawsuit in 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging the CFPB’s structure violated the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers. The district ...

A court panel recently declined to enforce a civil investigative demand issued by the CFPB because the language is too broad and generic. Attorneys said it was the second strike against the bureau for aggressive interpretation of its authority after the D.C. circuit ruled a CID invalid last year. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a CID issued to Source for Public Data – a company that provides public records through an internet-based ...