by Jeff Sovern As has been widely reported, last week the CFPB fined Wells Fargo $100 million for setting up phony accounts in consumers' names. But that didn't stop the House Financial Services Committee from voting yesterday on a largely party-line vote to adopt the Financial Choice Act, which would gut the Bureau. According to Law360, the […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
From Morning Consult's How Would Democrats Run the Senate Banking Committee?: Remarks over the last year from Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the committee’s top Democrat, make it clear that Democrats think they stand a chance at facilitating bipartisan legislation in the financial sector if they take back the Senate for the 115th Congress. Brown, as […]
by Jeff Sovern So says a study from the Glassgow Centre for Population Health, Public Health Implications of Payday Lending. The study's "key messages:" • Payday lending is a contemporary public health concern: the vulnerability of the populations involved, the urgency, scale and growth of the issue coupled with the corrosive nature of personal debt and financial […]
David L. Noll of Rutgers has written Regulating Arbitration, California Law Review, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: Arbitration is everywhere, as are calls to regulate its use in consumer and employment contracts. But when should Congress and federal administrative agencies do so? That is, what is the policy rationale for regulating arbitration through federal legislation and agency […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: In 2013, a loan officer at BancorpSouth Bank's Madison, Ala., branch received visits from two people with similar profiles within 10 days of each other, both saying they were first-time home buyers — one white, the other black. The employee allegedly steered the black customer to a smaller […]
Here. Excerpt: Thousands of angry consumers and business representatives have flooded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with comments on its May proposal to block companies from forcing customers to take disputes to arbitration instead of joining group lawsuits. Sentiment in the unusually high number of comment letters, more than 8,380 have already been filed though […]
Here. Excerpt from the Issue Brief: Although opponents of financial reform often claim that it has harmed community banks, a closer and more comprehensive review of the economic evidence shows that community banks remain healthy. Critics typically point to declining numbers of community banks as evidence that new regulatory requirements are too restrictive. In reality, […]
Here. Excerpt: While ACA maintains that its 3,500 members have "long been committed to making debt collection a more consumer-friendly experience," its idea of friendly stretches credulity. While the consumer bureau has proposed that collectors limit phone attempts to reach debtors to six a week, the ACA's idea was quite different — to limit "collection call attempts to no more […]
Here (free access). Excerpt: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called for a temporary suspension of all new federal regulations during a speech Tuesday, but even if he wins the White House, stalling or rolling back financial rules may prove to be beyond his reach. * * * "I don't think a full-on moratorium is even […]