Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

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On October 30, 2020, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a final rule, Regulation F, to implement the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  The final rule comes nearly 18 months after the proposed rule and more than four years after the CFPB first released an initial outline of debt collection proposals.  The final rule…

On October 28, 2020, the CFPB’s Private Education Loan Ombudsman published its annual report on student loans, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act. Despite an increased focus on student loans by many state legislatures and regulators and some members of Congress, the report reflects a significant decline in the number of consumer complaints about student loans over the past year. The report analyzes complaints submitted by consumers about student lenders and servicers between September 2019 and August 2020. Notably, the report covers a period during which many student loan borrowers have experienced financial hardships as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal government – as well as some state governments (in partnership with holders of private student loans) – has offered a myriad of loss mitigation options for eligible student loan borrowers.
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Continue Reading 2020 CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman’s Report Shows Significant Trend of Declining Consumer Complaints

We recently received a response to several FOIA requests we had made  to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) regarding various enforcement statistics and processes. Because the CFPB does not make these materials generally available to the public, we share them here. The materials include the Enforcement Policy and Procedures Manual and Consent Order template, and data regarding the number enforcement investigations, opened, closed and pending each fiscal year, and the number of matters referred from supervision to enforcement.  …
Continue Reading CFPB: Enforcement Manual and Stats

On October 20, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the Bureau) issued a final rule extending the Government-Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Patch until the Bureau’s general qualified mortgage (QM) changes kick in. To keep from spooking the residential mortgage markets, the Bureau’s final rule accomplishes three main objectives:

  1. Retains the temporary GSE qualified mortgage (QM) safe harbor until compliance with the Bureau’s revised general QM definition becomes mandatory, but without any overlap period as some commenters requested;
  2. Establishes an implementation period to facilitate the transition to the revised general QM loan definition, and suggests the adoption of an “optional early compliance period” for transitioning to the revised general QM before the mandatory compliance date; and
  3. Resolves the frightful gap the Bureau’s proposal threatened to create by terminating the GSE Patch in accordance with the date of loan application, as opposed to the date of loan consummation.

For those who have been cowering in the shadows, the GSE Patch refers to a temporary compliance safe harbor the Bureau granted in 2014 for loans eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Those GSE-eligible loans have been deemed to comply with federal ability-to-repay requirements applicable to closed-end residential mortgage loans. The GSE Patch grants QM status to certain loans excluded by the general QM definition – notably, loans with a debt-to-income ratio that exceeds 43%. The GSE Patch is set to expire on January 10, 2021, or when the GSEs are released from conservatorship, whichever occurs first. The Bureau is otherwise revising its general QM definition, in part to ensure that the Patch expiration does not deprive worthy borrowers of access to credit.

In establishing the end date for the GSE Patch, the Bureau’s final rule first clarifies that there will not be an “overlap period.” …
Continue Reading That’s the Spirit: The Haunting of the CFPB’s GSE Patch

News broke last week of a major reorganization at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau), with headlines focusing on how the shakeup will hamper investigations and limit the Office of Enforcement’s autonomy. To better understand what happened, it’s helpful to have a little bit of perspective on the CFPB’s authorities and organization. While it’s too soon to know how the reorganization will impact the agency’s enforcement docket, it is not at all clear that it will have the limiting impact that some expect.

The CFPB was created as a somewhat unique regulator, combining the traditional tools of prudential regulators like the Federal Reserve or Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (supervision and examination) and those of law enforcement agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (investigation and litigation). While the prudential regulators also have enforcement authority, that authority is generally limited to entities over which the agency has supervisory authority (and related individuals and service providers). And that enforcement authority is exercised only after an examination by supervisory personnel; that is, it is the culmination of the supervisory process, not an independent process. By contrast, the CFPB’s enforcement jurisdiction is much broader than the defined set of covered persons over whom it has supervisory jurisdiction, extending to any company or individual that is subject to one of eighteen different statutes or who offers or provides a consumer financial product or service. While some CFPB enforcement actions arise out of examinations, the vast majority to date have been outgrowths of organic enforcement investigations that were not tied to examinations.

At bottom, these two tools—supervision and enforcement—are just different legal authorities by which the agency can gather information from institutions subject to its jurisdiction to determine if legal violations occurred. For a brand new agency, that raises a difficult question – which of these tools do you use in any given circumstance to determine if a particular institution is violating the law? Do you send in examiners or enforcement attorneys?

That question wasn’t answered immediately at the agency’s creation. Instead, the offices of Supervision and Enforcement each focused on hiring staff and building out processes for the exercise of their respective functions.…
Continue Reading Unpacking the Enforcement Shakeup at the CFPB – A (Former) Insider’s View

The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act is ambiguous, and compliance often turns on the facts of arrangements. For that reason, settlement service providers have been asking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for guidance since it took responsibility for RESPA nearly 10 years ago. These calls were amplified when Section 8 of RESPA was an early…

On September 29, 2020, the CFPB, FTC, and state and federal law enforcement agencies announced a new initiative, called Operation Corrupt Collector, to address certain abusive and threatening debt collection practices, including “phantom” debt collection. If the partnership sounds familiar, it is. Operation Corrupt Collector was essentially announced almost exactly five years after the FTC announced Operation Collection Protection. Though the programs have different names, the goals appear to be the same: bring cases against debt collectors who engage in abusive debt collection practices.
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Continue Reading New Name, Same Initiative? Federal and State Regulators Partner (again) to Limit Abusive Debt Collection Practices

On Monday, October 5, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) issued a policy statement on early termination of consent orders. Recognizing that there may be “exceptional circumstances” where it is appropriate to terminate a consent order before its expiration date, the policy statement explains the process by which an entity subject to a consent order can apply for early termination and the criteria that the Bureau will consider in assessing such an application.

As a threshold matter, the entity must (of course) have actually complied with the terms and conditions of the consent order. But certain persons and orders are de facto ineligible for early termination. If the consent order imposes a ban on participating in a certain industry or involves violations of an earlier Bureau order, for example, or when there has been any criminal action related to the violations in the order, then the order is excluded from the policy and cannot be terminated early. Additionally, because natural persons, unlike entities, cannot make the same demonstration about being in a “satisfactory” compliance position—and the Bureau believes it would be impractical to undertake a review of whether individuals are likely to comply with the law in the future—early termination is not an option for individuals who have settled with the Bureau.

Early termination under the policy is only going to be available for orders issued through the administrative process, …
Continue Reading Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Announces Policy on Early Termination of Consent Orders

On September 15, 2020, the CFPB published a detailed outline of proposed options it is considering to implement a rule under Section 1071 of the Dodd Frank Act. Ten years ago, Section 1071 amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require that financial institutions collect and report information concerning credit applications made by women- or minority-owned businesses and by small businesses. Although the CFPB was tasked with drafting rules to implement Section 1071, it did not take significant steps to meet that obligation until 2017, when it reported on some preliminary research, and then later in November 2019, when it held an information-gathering symposium.

As we previously noted, once Section 1071 is implemented, certain financial institutions will be required to collect information regarding the race, sex, and ethnicity of the principal owners of small businesses and women- and minority-owned businesses and submit this information to the CFPB, similar to what is currently required by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for mortgage loans. The CFPB’s outline released this week proposes several potential options for developing the small business lending data collection rule and is a precursor to any future proposed rulemaking. At this stage, the CFPB is seeking feedback on the direction of the rule. Feedback and comments on the scope of the rule can be sent to 2020-SBREFA-1071@cfpb.gov until December 14, 2020. The CFPB is also seeking feedback on the potential impacts on small business entities and has requested submission of such feedback by November 9, 2020.

Below, we summarize the key aspects of the Bureau’s outline and its proposals regarding the scope of the rule.…
Continue Reading CFPB Finally Makes Progress on Implementing Small Business Lending Data Collection Requirements

The California legislature ended its legislative session late on Monday, August 31, 2020, by passing two significant bills that will be of interest to the state’s mortgage servicers and other licensees—AB 3088 and AB 1864.

AB 3088 imposes new forbearance-related requirements on mortgage servicers related to the COVID-19 pandemic (in addition to significant protections for tenants in California beyond the scope of this summary). AB 1864 renames, reorganizes, and grants new authority to California’s primary financial services regulator to create a “mini-CFPB”—although many licensees are exempt from the new authority. Governor Newsom has signed AB 3088 into law, which took effect immediately as an urgency measure, and is expected to follow suit with AB 1864 in the near future.

Below we summarize those provisions from the bills that are particularly relevant to California mortgage licensees and federal- and state-chartered depository institutions servicing mortgage loans in California.…
Continue Reading California Enacts Two Bills with Significant Impacts on Mortgage Licensees in the State