CFPB Releases Supervisory Highlights, Winter 2016 Issue

CFPB Dodd-Frank FDCPA Remittance Mortgage Origination

On March 8, the CFPB released its tenth edition of Supervisory Highlights, summarizing supervisory observations in the areas of consumer reporting, debt collection, mortgage origination, remittances, student loan servicing, and fair lending. The report covers the CFPB’s supervision work in the last quarter of 2015, generally between September 2015 and December 2015. Noteworthy findings in the report include: (i) violations of the Dodd-Frank Act’s unfair practice provisions by student loan servicers who would automatically default borrowers and co-signers on a private loan if either declared bankruptcy; (ii) violations of the October 2013 Remittance Rule, including providers failing to give complete and accurate disclosures to consumers, failing to cancel transactions within the required timeframe, failing to promptly credit a consumer’s account when an error occurred, and either not communicating the results of error investigations within the required timeframe or at all, or communicating them to an unauthorized party; (iii) inaccuracies in checking account information reported to NSCRAs by banks and credit unions; and (iv) violations of the FDCPA, with debt collectors failing to honor consumers’ requests to stop making contact with them and threatening garnishment against student loan borrowers who were not eligible for garnishment under the Department of Education guidelines. In addition to summarizing supervisory observations, the report provides an overview of the public enforcement actions taken between September and December 2015. Regarding non-public supervisory actions in the areas of deposits, debt collection, and mortgage origination, the report states that the CFPB collected more than $14 million in restitution to approximately 228,000 consumers in the fourth quarter of 2015.