CFPB Pressures Banks To Disclose Campus Marketing Agreements

CFPB Prepaid Cards Student Lending Debit Cards Retail Banking

On August 6, the CFPB’s Student Loan Ombudsman, Rohit Chopra, published a blog post addressing the financial arrangements between financial institutions and institutions of higher education that market financial products to students. Last year, the CFPB urged banks to disclose any agreements with colleges and universities to market debit, prepaid, and other products to students and warned that “[t]he CFPB prioritizes its supervisory examinations based on the risks posed to consumers” and “[failing to make] college financial product arrangements transparent to students and their families . . . increase[s] such risks.” In this latest review, the CFPB assessed the  Big Ten schools and found that at least 11 have established banking partners to market financial products to students. Of those 11, the CFPB found only four contracts on the bank websites, and it characterized three of those four contracts as “partial”—i.e. in the CFPB’s view, the disclosed agreements “did not contain important information, such as how much they pay schools to gain access to students in order to market and sell them financial products and services.” Concurrent with the blog post, the CFPB sent letters to schools asserting that “their bank partner has not yet committed to transparency when it comes to student financial products.”