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“Our mission is to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Americans,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says on its about page. A laudable goal, financial markets should work for consumers. But now the bureau has stepped past overseeing financial products, to overseeing the goods purchased with financial products.
In its white paper on financial education released in April, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pointed to in-school branches as a way to build students’ financial literacy through hands-on learning.
An update to the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act, or CARD Act, will make it easier for stay-at-home moms or dads to get a credit card.
Banks offering deposit advances or considering it, take note. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sees deposit advances as functionally equivalent to payday loans.
Steven L. Antonakes, Acting Deputy Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, spoke to a group of bankers on Thursday, April 18 in Des Moines, Iowa. In his 45-minute presentation, he explained how the bureau decides which institutions to examine.
Raj Date, the former deputy director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who resigned from the CFPB earlier this year, has opened an advisory firm for banks focusing on consumer finance, according the American Banker.
Hubert H. Humphrey III, who was named Assistant Director for Older Americans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Oct. 9, 2011, has taken on a new post at the bureau; he is now Senior Liaison Officer.
On April 11, the CFPB unveiled an online tool to help people shop for college. The tool, located at the CFPB web site, allows a person to list expenses for three colleges, side by side.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published a compliance guide to aid small banks and mortgage lenders in understanding and complying with the bureau’s Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage Rule, which goes into effect January, 2014
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on April 4 four enforcement actions to end what the CFPB said it believes to be “improper kickbacks paid by mortgage insurers to mortgage lenders in exchange for business.”