by Jeff Sovern The American Banker had an article this week, Could the Fight Over Cost-Benefit Analysis Kill Reg Relief? that made some interesting points. After noting that Senate Banking Committee Chair Richard Shelby advocates more cost-benefit analysis, the author, Victoria Finkle, wrote: "The idea of rigorous cost-benefit analysis is like motherhood and apple pie […]
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
By guest blogger Peter A. Holland I have covered the NCLC's excellent proposal to ban the sale of time-barred debt here. The NCLC recommendations point to the larger problem that some banks sell off their worst, most unreliable, least collectible, most dubious accounts for literally pennies on the dollar (sometimes less), pursuant to broad disclaimers of […]
by Jeff Sovern Brian posted earlier that the CFPB has announced a field hearing on arbitration for March 10. Because the CFPB often schedules such hearings when it announces something, it is probably going to release the next installment in its arbitration report (maybe the final installment) in conjunction with the hearing. As Brian also […]
By guest blogger Peter A. Holland In a time of limited resources, perhaps a new model is emerging of joint CFPB/State Attorney General enforcement actions. The recent joint action by the Bureau and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh provides a nice case study. Recently, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau […]
Here. An excerpt: At the center of the regulations being considered, the people familiar with the matter said, is a requirement that lenders assess whether borrowers can repay loans — interest and principal — at the end of a two-week period by examining their income, other debts and their payment history. Few people can, the […]
by Jeff Sovern As previously reported in The New York Times and CFPB Monitor, a CFPB report based on data in the National Survey of Mortgage Borrowers has found that nearly half of borrowers don't shop for a mortgage. The new report,taken together with my earlier survey of mortgage brokers finding that consumers virtually never back […]
The President highlighted consumer issues several times in his speech tonight. Here's some of the relevant text: On Dodd-Frank and the CFPB: "We believed that sensible regulations could prevent another crisis, shield families from ruin, and encourage fair competition. Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts and a new consumer watchdog to protect […]
Lauren Willis (of Loyola Los Angeles) and Theresa Amato (of the Fair Contracts Project) have a great op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times on what to do about consumer financial illiteracy. "There are dozens of entities devoted to educating you about all things financial," they write, "[b]ut none of it is working very well." Financial […]
by Maura Dundon (Senior Policy Counsel, Center for Responsible Lending) The sale of Corinthian Colleges (the for-profit college chain that operates Everest, WyoTech, and Heald) to the student loan debt collector ECMC is poised to close today. The deal has raised serious concerns about the fate of Corinthian students and whether the new entity represents […]

