The notice arrived Saturday morning. Rohit Chopra’s tenure as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had ended — by the new administration — well short of the completion of his five-year term. The past week was filled with grumbling from various industry corners and inquiring journalists wondering why Chopra had not already been forced out when counterparts at other federal agencies were removed from their positions days before. Consumer advocates on the other hand relished every day Chopra remained and welcomed every announcement of the newest CFPB actions taken to rein in financial industry abuses that distressed working families, older Americans, servicemembers, and veterans. It is undeniable that Director Chopra and his team performed and produced results for the American public until his last day at the agency.
In Chopra’s last month alone, the CFPB announced meaningful enforcement actions and new reports informing on various sectors of the consumer financial marketplace. Some January highlights:
• The final announced enforcement action nabbed international remittance transfer company Wise for misleading its U.S. customers about its ATM fees and failing to properly disclose accurate fee amounts. Finding that Wise violated multiple consumer laws and regulations, including the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, the Remittance Transfer Rule, and the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the Bureau ordered Wise to pay approximately $450,000 in consumer redress and a $2.025 million civil money penalty.
• The CFPB announced an order against consumer reporting agency Equifax, Inc. for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act with its massive failures in handling consumer reports and investigating consumers’ disputes. CFPB ordered Equifax to pay a $15 million civil money penalty and to take steps to comply with the law.
• Also, this month, the CFPB caught American Honda Finance Corporation, Honda’s auto financing company reporting inaccurate information to car buyers’ credit reports to the consumer reporting companies during the COVID-19 crisis and failing to investigate the credit reporting disputes. The CFPB ordered Honda, whose actions damaged consumers’ credit reports, to pay $10.3 million in redress to consumers, to take steps to correct its inaccurate reporting, and to pay a $2.5 million fine.
• The Bureau issued a handful of reports in the last month documenting practices in various sectors, including auto repossessions, rental housing payment data, and its latest accounting of consumer reporting companies. One of the papers covering servicemembers’ experiences in the auto lending market determined that servicemembers face more financial risks at different points in the auto lending process compared to non-servicemembers. Included among them, servicemembers had higher interest rates and longer loan terms than those of non-servicemembers, which translated into them making higher monthly payments.