Following up on the recent pledge by CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney to “seek evidence” that the bureau is fulfilling its mission, the CFPB has issued a formal request for information on civil investigative demands, a source of tremendous controversy and uncertainty for the industry during the tenure of former director Richard Cordray. The agency asked for “comments and information from interested parties to assist it in assessing potential changes to the bureau’s CID processes, consistent with law, to consider whether any changes to the processes would be appropriate,” said the document. Entities that have received CIDs as well as their attorneys were invited to comment. “The issuance of CIDs is an essential tool for fulfilling the bureau’s statutory mission ...
The CFPB last week issued another in its series of requests for information – this one focusing on the bureau’s administrative adjudications. “The bureau is seeking to better understand the benefits and impacts of its use of administrative adjudications, and how its existing process may be improved,” the agency said. “This RFI will provide an opportunity for the public to submit feedback and suggest ways to improve outcomes for both consumers and covered entities.” In order to more effectively evaluate suggestions, the bureau asked that comments include specific discussion of the positive and negative aspects of the agency’s administrative adjudication processes, including whether a policy of proceeding in federal court in all instances would be preferable. The CFPB also would like ...
President Trump still needs a permanent director for the CFPB, and rumor has it that the White House is contemplating appointing someone more moderate than Acting Director Mick Mulvaney or House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. One newcomer to the supposed short list under consideration is Jonathan Dever, a Republican state representative in the Ohio legislature and chairman of its Financial Institutions Housing and Urban Development Committee. In this capacity, he is charged with overseeing the reform of all the state’s financial institution laws, laying out an aggressive agenda of reorganizing and rewriting its foreclosure, lending, real estate, and banking statutes. Another new name being floated is that of Dan Iannicola, president and CEO of the Financial Literacy ...
The CFPB last week moved to restructure how the agency enforces fair lending laws, consolidating that function under the director’s office, which is headed by interim appointee Mick Mulvaney. In a statement provided to Inside the CFPB, John Czwartacki, senior advisor to the acting director, said: “The bureau’s statutory mandate includes the supervision and enforcement of fair lending laws and regulations [and] the bureau will continue to perform those functions.” He added: “The fact is, it never made sense to have two separate and duplicative supervision and enforcement functions within the same agency – one for all cases except fair lending, and the other only for fair lending cases. By announcing our intent to combine these efforts under one roof, we ...
The Consumer Mortgage Coalition recently wrote to CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney to express the continuing, unresolved concerns its members have with some of the bankruptcy-related provisions of the bureau’s mortgage servicing rules. As of April 2018, mortgage servicers will have to send monthly billing statements to consumers in active bankruptcy cases and certain bankruptcy cases in which the debtor’s personal liability was previously discharged. This is problematic for a number of reasons, according to the CMC. First, these proposed rules conflict with well-settled bankruptcy law prohibiting a creditor from collecting from consumers who are in an active bankruptcy case or who have previously been discharged from personal liability in a prior bankruptcy case. “The courts have held these provisions ...
CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney recently brought Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, up to speed on data security at the bureau, in response to her recent inquiry that challenged his imposition of a freeze in industry data collection efforts. “I do not expect you, as an outside observer of the bureau’s activities, to be aware of the bureau’s other data security risks,” he said in reply to her earlier correspondence. “You may not know that prior to my appointment as acting director, there were 233 confirmed breaches of consumer personally identifiable information (PII) within the bureau’s consumer response system by the bureau or its contractor, and at least another 840 suspected PII breaches by financial institutions using the company portal were ...
Complaints by active-duty and retired U.S. military personnel about their mortgages rose in many categories tracked, both on a quarterly basis and on an annual basis, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside the CFPB. Overall, they are definitely trending up. For instance, complaints by service members about all mortgage products in general rose from 582 incidents in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 739 in the fourth quarter of 2017, but they fell from a total of 741 in the third quarter of last year. The increase was a little more consistent when particular mortgage products were segregated out from the aggregate data. For instance, gripes about conventional mortgages rose from 218 in 4Q16 to 334 [with charts] ...
House Rules Committee Expected to Clear Legislation to Tweak Points and Fees Definition under the ATR Rule. The House Rules Committee is expected to clear sometime this week H.R. 1153, “The Mortgage Choice Act,” legislation that would make two adjustments to the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) definition of points and fees to ensure greater consumer choice in mortgage and settlement services under the ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule.... OIG Has Mixed News for CFPB on Mobile Device Data Security. The CFPB got a dinged report card from the Office of Inspector General in terms of the security of mobile technology that bureau staff use. “Mobile devices help CFPB staff carry out their duties, but the portability of these devices heightens the risk of loss or theft of IT equipment and data,” said the OIG in explaining its motivation for evaluating the CFPB’s mobile encryption practices....
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