Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

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The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (“BCFP” or the “Bureau”) wants your input on its proposed changes to the Trial Disclosure Programs Policy (“TDP Policy”). Under Dodd-Frank, the BCFP can permit covered persons to conduct trial disclosure programs and to provide a safe harbor (or waiver) from the corresponding applicable regulatory requirements. 12 U.S.C. § 5532(e). These trials can include modifications or replacements to existing disclosures or forms, changed delivery mechanisms, or the elimination of certain disclosure requirements. The BCFP previously published the TDP Policy in October 2013. However, as the Bureau noted, the prior version of the policy “failed to effectively encourage trial disclosure programs: The Bureau did not permit a single such program in the nearly five years since the Policy was issued.”

The proposed TDP Policy looks quite similar to the 2013 version, with a few differences that reflect the BCFP’s renewed focus on innovation and a desire to lessen the burden of approving trial programs. …
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Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) recently introduced Senate Bill 3401 to facilitate access to residential mortgage loans for consumers who are self-employed or otherwise receive income from nontraditional sources. The lawmakers indicated that lenders have shied away from loans to those consumers due to overly strict or ambiguous federal requirements for documenting the consumers’ income. The bill would, if enacted, provide mortgage lenders greater flexibility in documenting income during the underwriting process. They call the bill the Self-Employed Mortgage Access Act.

Federal regulations require that for most closed-end, dwelling-secured loans, a lender must make a reasonable and good faith determination that the consumer will have a reasonable ability to repay the loan, based on (among other factors) the consumer’s verified income. To take advantage of a presumption of compliance with that requirement, most lenders follow the regulations’ Qualified Mortgage (QM) guardrails, described in part in Appendix Q of the regulations. Appendix Q generally dictates the type of income documentation a lender must obtain.

For example, for a self-employed individual (any consumer with a 25 percent or greater ownership interest in a business), Appendix Q requires that a lender seeking to make a QM must get the consumer’s signed, dated individual tax returns, with all applicable tax schedules, for the most recent two years. For a corporation, “S” corporation, or partnership, the lender must get signed copies of the federal business income tax returns, with all applicable tax schedules, for the last two years. Finally, the lender must get a year-to-date profit-and-loss statement and a balance sheet. Appendix Q does not expressly provide for any flexibility in those documentation requirements.…
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The Summer 2018 edition of Supervisory Highlights –the first one the BCFP has issued under Mick Mulvaney’s leadership – is much the same as previous editions. In it, the Bureau describes recent supervisory observations in various industries, and summarizes recent public enforcement actions as well as supervision program developments.

One aspect of the report that is notably different, however, is the introductory language. In prior regular editions of Supervisory Highlights, the report’s introduction would emphasize the corrective action that the Bureau had required of supervised institutions. It would highlight the amount of total restitution to consumers and the number of consumers affected by supervisory activities, and would note the millions of dollars imposed in civil money penalties.

This new version eliminates all of that discussion from the introduction. Instead, the Bureau has added language emphasizing that “institutions are subject only to the requirements of relevant laws and regulations” and that the purpose of disseminating these Supervisory Highlights is to “help institutions better understand how the Bureau examines institutions” to help industry limit risks to consumers.

The first sentence of the report, which in previous iterations used to say that the Bureau is “committed to a consumer financial marketplace that is fair, transparent, and competitive, and that works for all consumers” now says the Bureau is committed to a marketplace that is “free, innovative, competitive, and transparent, where the rights of all parties are protected by the rule of law, and where consumers are free to choose the products and services that best fit their individual needs.”

Ultimately, time will tell whether this is simply rhetoric or if the Bureau’s supervisory and enforcement posture will be dramatically different from that under Mulvaney’s predecessor.…
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The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (the “Bureau”) has struck out again in trying to enforce a Civil Investigative Demand (“CID”) that contains broad and generic language about the nature of the agency’s investigation. For the second time, a US Court of Appeals has ruled that a CID issued by the Bureau was invalid because the agency failed to meet the statutory requirement that the CID identify the conduct constituting the alleged violation under investigation and the provision of law applicable to such violation, as required by 12 U.S.C. § 5562(c)(2). As we previously discussed, last year the DC Circuit ruled that a CID that the Bureau issued to a college accrediting agency failed to meet the statutory threshold when it merely identified “unlawful acts and practices in connection with accrediting for profit colleges” as the conduct under investigation. CFPB v. ACICS, 854 F.3d 683 (D.C. Cir. 2017).

Now, a unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit has followed suit and held that a CID issued to the Source for Public Data, “a company that provides public records to the public through an Internet-based search engine,” is invalid because it uses similarly broad language that does not comply with the statute. …
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On September 5, 2018, a coalition of 14 state attorneys general, led by North Carolina’s attorney general, Josh Stein, wrote to Acting BCFP Director Mick Mulvaney to express “grave concerns” that the BCFP may seek to abandon the federal government’s longstanding position that ECOA provides for disparate impact liability. A copy of the letter can…

The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (the Bureau) issued an interpretive rule on August 31, 2018, explaining how depository institutions that originate fewer than 500 open- or closed-end home mortgage loans annually may take advantage of data collection and reporting relief.

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) has for decades required mortgage lenders to collect and report significant data on their applications for, and originations or purchases of, residential mortgage loans. In 2015, in response to the Dodd-Frank Act, the Bureau significantly amended the regulations under HMDA, revising which institutions must collect and report the data, what data those institutions must report and in connection with which transactions, and how the institutions must submit the data to the government. Those expansive changes, requiring significant systems updates and hours of training, have already largely become effective. For applicable institutions, the bulk of the changes kicked in on January 1, 2018

However, in May 2018, Congress enacted the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (EGRRCPA), amending HMDA to allow certain depository institutions to avoid the collection and reporting of so-called “new” data elements. While those institutions may have wished this relief had come before they were forced to implement all the changes needed to collect the new data, the actual reporting deadline for that data is still months away. In the meantime, those institutions (and their regulators) had many questions about what exactly they could or should do now. The Bureau’s interpretive rule attempts to provide them some guidance.…
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Nearly seven months into Mick Mulvaney’s tenure as Acting Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Bureau), the agency issued just its second enforcement action under his leadership on June 13, 2018. You may have missed it, as the press release was not pushed out through the Bureau’s email notifications and the cursory press release may have flown under your radar. The settlement is with a parent company and its subsidiaries that originated, provided, purchased, serviced, and collected on high-cost, short-term secured and unsecured consumer loans. The consent order contains allegations of violations of the prohibition on unfair practices under the Consumer Financial Protection Act and of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and requires the respondents to pay a $5 million civil money penalty. Notably, the consent order does not require any consumer redress, despite Mr. Mulvaney’s stated intent to only pursue cases with “quantifiable and unavoidable” harm to consumers.

Debt Collection Practices

The Bureau alleges that respondents engaged in unfair in-person debt collection practices, including discussing debts in public, leaving the respondents’ “field cards” (presumably identifying the respondents) with third parties (including the consumers’ children and neighbors), and visiting consumers’ places of employment. The Bureau alleges that these practices were unfair because they caused substantial injury such as humiliation, inconvenience, and reputational damage; consumers could not reasonably avoid the harm because consumers were not informed of whether and when such visits would occur and could not stop respondents from engaging in the visits; and any potential benefit in the form of recoveries were outweighed by the substantial injury to consumers. The consent order notes that respondent attempted 12 million in-person visits to more than 1.3 million consumers over a five-year period, and requires respondents to cease in-person collection visits at consumers’ homes, places of employment, and public places.…
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Last week, we wrote about how the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (“Bureau”) under Acting Director Mick Mulvaney had surprisingly doubled down on claims of unfair, deceptive and abusive practices (“UDAAP”) brought under former Director Richard Cordray in a case against a lead aggregator (back when the Bureau referred to itself as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). As if to prove the point that the Bureau is not backing off aggressive UDAAP claims, the very next day the Bureau filed a brief  in another case similarly supporting novel UDAAP claims brought under Cordray. The Bureau’s brief was filed in opposition to a motion to dismiss by defendants Think Finance, LLC and related entities. The case involves Bureau claims that Think Finance engaged in unfair, deceptive and abusive conduct when it attempted to collect on loans that were, according to the Bureau, void under state law.…
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The Office of Students and Young Consumers (Office of Students) has been an important component of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or the Bureau) since its creation in 2011. On May 9, 2018, the CFPB’s Acting Director announced plans to fold the Office of Students into the Office of Financial Education. The Student Loan Ombudsman, a position the Dodd-Frank Act created, will also reportedly be part of the Office of Financial Education. This move could signal a major shift in the CFPB’s approach to the student loan market. 

As its name indicates, the Office of Financial Education focuses on consumer education. Specifically, its stated focus is “strengthen(ing) the delivery of financial education . . . and creat[ing] opportunities for people to obtain the skills to build their financial well being.” Given that mission, some have speculated that the recent movement of the Office of Students within the Bureau’s Office of Financial Education may lead to fewer examinations, investigations, and enforcement actions against participants in the private student loan market. …
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Much has been written about Mick Mulvaney’s statements about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will no longer “push the envelope” when it comes to enforcement and no longer engage in “regulation by enforcement.” But a little-noticed filing by the CFPB in the Ninth Circuit last month suggests that the CFPB is not necessarily scaling back its enforcement efforts with respect to novel claims under its authority to prevent unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts and practices (UDAAP).…
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