Report addresses the bureau’s and Kraninger’s initiatives in the last several months, with more to be seen on the proposed debt collection rulemaking.
10/14/2019 9:00
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s pending Fall 2019 rulemaking agenda will include updates on its priorities and rulemaking plans, according to Director Kathy Kraninger’s “Semiannual Report of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection” released in advance of her testimony before two committees on Capitol Hill this week.
Topics in the semiannual report are expected to be discussed during Kraninger’s testimony at the House Financial Services Committee hearing “Who Is Standing Up for Consumers? A Semi-Annual Review of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” at 10 a.m EST Wednesday, Oct. 16; and the Senate Banking Committee’s hearing “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Semiannual Report to Congress,” at 10 a.m. EST Thursday, Oct. 17. Both hearings will be live streamed.
For now, the report provides an overview of actions on the proposed debt collection rulemaking from Oct. 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019 and other initiatives under Kraninger’s leadership since she started with the bureau in December 2018.
“We continue to seek the most effective means to use the tools provided by Congress to ensure compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act and other consumer protection statutes. And that includes vigorous and even-handed enforcement and focusing on prevention of harm,” Kraninger said in her introduction to the report. “The importance of having access to financial products and services that meet individual needs, and the Bureau’s potential to foster financial well-being for Americans is significant and should be maximized. I am committed to strengthening the consumer financial marketplace by providing financial institutions clear ‘rules of the road’ that allow them to offer consumers a range of high-quality, innovative financial services and products.”
The semiannual report generally covers a review of consumers’ access to financial services and products, plans for rulemaking by the CFPB, an analysis of consumer complaints and an overview of supervisory and enforcement activities.
According to the report, “the bureau is considering further prioritization and planning of the bureau’s rulemaking activities, both with regard to substantive projects and modifications to the processes that the bureau uses to develop and review regulations.”
Additional highlights from the report include:
- Financial services companies respond to most consumer complaints and do so in a timely manner. The bureau received approximately 321,000 complaints from April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019 and of those sent approximately 257,300 (80%) to companies for review and response. Of those, companies responded to approximately 95% of the complaints and 98% of the responses were in a timely manner. Overall, complaints declined approximately 2 % since the last report and debt collection represented 24% of complaints after 39% for credit and consumer reporting. The CFPB continues to analyze how the Consumer Complaint Database information is presented to the public and announced changes to the database in September, ACA International previously reported.
- The bureau’s initiatives include assessing significant policies such as The No-Action Letter Policy, Trial Disclosure Program Policy, and Compliance Assistance Sandbox Policy to foster innovation at financial services companies. The policies address product sandboxes or “regulatory sandboxes” that essentially provide the opportunity for innovative products to be tested with consumers without regulatory burdens, ACA previously reported.
Read Kraninger’s complete semiannual report to Congress here.