InfoBytes Blog
House Republicans question CFPB’s card late-fee proposal
On March 1, several Republican House Financial Services Committee members sent a letter to CFPB Director Rohit Chopra expressing concerns over the Bureau’s credit card late fee proposal. Among other things, the lawmakers claimed that last year the Bureau broke precedent by failing to address, for the first time, credit card late fees when the agency issued the annual fee adjustments as required under Regulation Z, which implements TILA (covered by InfoBytes here). “In prior years when the CFPB did not make inflation adjustments, because inflation was low, it explained the statistical basis for not indexing the fee,” the letter said. “However, the CFPB has yet to explain or justify why there was not an increase in the most recent annual adjustment announcement—a striking lack of transparency and accountability, and especially so in an era of outsized inflation.” The lawmakers also addressed the Bureau’s February notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to amend Regulation Z and its commentary. As previously covered by InfoBytes, the Bureau said the NPRM would lower the safe harbor dollar amount for first-time and subsequent-violation credit card late fees to $8, eliminate the automatic annual inflation adjustment, and cap late fees at 25 percent of the consumer’s required minimum payment. According to the lawmakers, the changes would disincentivize consumers to make timely payments and impact consumer behavior by shifting “delinquent payment costs to other, innocent, consumers who absorb the associated costs through higher rates or inability to further access unsecured credit that they may need to smooth their consumption.”
The lawmakers posed several questions to the Bureau, including asking why the agency failed to convene a panel as mandated by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 to advise on the rulemaking “[g]iven the broad applicability of this rule making to small institutions.” The Bureau was also asked to provide the data used to determine the dollar limits, as well as any communications the agency had with the Biden administration in the development of the NPRM.