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House Financial Services Committee Schedules Debate on Financial CHOICE Act
On September 13, the House Financial Services Committee will meet to discuss the Financial CHOICE Act. As previously covered in InfoBytes, the Financial CHOICE Act is a Republican alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act. The Committee is scheduled to debate potential amendments to the Financial CHOICE Act and to vote on the legislation.
White House Releases Report on the Dodd-Frank Act and Community Banking; ABA Refutes Claims
Recently, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report titled “The Performance of Community Banks Over Time.” Seeking to address industry concern that Dodd-Frank regulations have negatively impacted community banks, the report presents research related to bank branching patterns and macroeconomic conditions as “evidence” to the contrary, maintaining that “community banks have remained healthy as the Dodd-Frank financial reform has been implemented.” The report presents the following five key points as indication that community banks “remain strong” under the Dodd-Frank Act: (i) with the exception of smallest community banks, the lending growth rate has increased since the financial crisis in 2010; (ii) evidence fails to suggest that Dodd-Frank led to a decline in the number of community banks across counties; (iii) since 1994, for community banks with assets between $100 million and $10 billion, the average number of branch offices has increased; (iv) the decline in the number and market share of community banks with assets totaling less than $100 million is a result of growth; and (v) a combination of macroeconomic factors, such as low equilibrium interest rates, contribute to “a substantial portion of the drop in new bank entry in recent years.” In closing, the report reasons that the Obama Administration “has taken important steps to ensure that regulatory requirements are implemented in a fair and equitable manner for community banks.”
ABA president Rob Nichols released a statement challenging the report’s findings, claiming a “serious disconnect between [the] report and the daily reality for America’s hometown banks and the communities they serve.” Although Nichols acknowledges that the Dodd-Frank Act is not the only contributing factor causing community banks to close, he suggests that the “more than 24,000 pages of proposed and final rules belies the idea that Dodd-Frank had no impact” and emphasizes that “[c]omprehensive regulatory relief is long overdue for community banks.”
CFPB Responds to Senators' Request to Tailor Regulations to Exempt Smaller Financial Institutions
On August 17, CFPB Director Cordray responded to a request, from a 70 senator coalition spearheaded by Senators Donnelly (D-IN) and Sasse (R-NE), that the CFPB further tailor its regulations that may be “unduly burdensome” for community banks and credit unions. In Cordray’s response, he stated that the CFPB is committed to achieving well-tailored and effective regulations within the provisions of Dodd-Frank. Further, Cordray outlined already-in-place exemptions for small creditors, various actions taken to ensure the CFPB’s “commitment” to maintaining effective regulations, and highlighted the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Act (SBREFA) panel as “just one part of the Bureau’s broader initiatives to address the unique issues facing small financial institutions.” Cordray did, however, note that one of the CFPB’s objectives is to “enforce Federal consumer financial law ‘consistently, without regard to the status of a person as a depository institution.’”
CFPB Announces New Board and Council Members
On August 19, the CFPB announced new members to the Consumer Advisory Board, the Community Bank Advisory Council, Credit Union Advisory Council, and Academic Research Council. Pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB established the Consumer Advisory Board to counsel the agency’s Director on consumer financial issues; the Community Bank Advisory Council, the Credit Union Advisory Council, and the Academic Research Council were created at the Director’s order. The nine newly appointed members to the Consumer Advisory Board and the two new members to the Academic Research Council will serve three-year terms; the seven new members to the Community Bank Council and the eight new members to Credit Union Advisory Council will serve two-year terms.
CFPB Issues Consent Order to a National Bank Over Student Loan Servicing Practices
On August 22, the CFPB issued a consent order to a national bank to resolve allegations that its student loan servicing practices were unfair and deceptive in violation of the Dodd-Frank Act and that its payment aggregation practices violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The CFPB alleged that the bank failed to disclose key aspects related to its payment allocation process, including that partial payments would be distributed across all loans, even if a payment was sufficient to satisfy the minimum payment required for an individual loan. According to the consent order, the bank’s “allocation of a Partial Payment proportionally to all loans in the account sometimes caused consumers’ payments to satisfy fewer, if any, of the loan amounts due in the account than if the Partial Payment had been allocated in a manner that satisfied as many of the loan amounts as possible.” According to the CFPB, the bank’s failure to properly disclose its method for payment allocation resulted in consumers incurring improper late fees, which, if left unpaid for more than 30 days at the end of the month, were reported as delinquent to consumer reporting agencies. The CFPB further alleged that the bank’s payment processors used a late fee monitoring report that had a system coding error that improperly charged consumers late fees if a payment was made on the last day of a grace period, or if consumers chose to make partial payments instead of one payment. The CFPB contended that the bank failed to update, correct, or remove negative information that was inaccurately reported to credit reporting agencies. Pursuant to the consent order, the bank must (i) pay $410,000 in consumer redress; (ii) pay a civil penalty of $3.6 million; (iii) improve its student loan servicing practices to ensure that consumers’ partial payments are distributed in such a way that the amount due is satisfied for as many loans as possible, unless the consumer requests otherwise; (iv) enhance its disclosure statements; and (v) remove or correct errors on consumers’ credit reports.
Industry Groups Voice Concern that the CFPB's Arbitration Proposal Fails to Provide Protection for Consumers
On August 22, the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Banks Association, and the Financial Services Roundtable sent a letter to CFPB Director Cordray regarding the agency’s proposed arbitration rule. According to the Associations, the CFPB’s proposal seeking to impose certain restrictions on the use of mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses is inconsistent with the agency’s March 2015 study of consumer arbitration and fails to meet the Dodd-Frank requirements that it provide consumer protection and satisfy the public interest. Arguing that consumers will “truly suffer if the proposed rule becomes final,” the letter highlights the following concerns: (i) due to the “surge” of additional class actions, consumers, as tax payers, will be forced to pay for the increased costs to the court systems; (ii) as litigants, they will face backlogs as court systems experience delays in administering and resolving the class action suits; (iii) as customers of financial service providers, they will be subject to increased prices and/or reduced services because “the billions of dollars in class action litigation costs will be passed through them in whole or in part”; and (iv) consumers will lose the benefits of arbitration, including efficiency, convenience, and fewer costs. The Associations contend that the proposal, if passed, would be particularly restricting for small dollar “non-classable” claims. The Associations further their argument against the proposal by pointing to various inconsistencies with the conclusions outlined in the CFPB’s March 2015 study. Moreover, the letter asserts that the CFPB’s 2015 study was “incomplete” because it failed to address and analyze several key issues that would further demonstrate the proposed rule’s shortcomings with respect to public interest, including, among other things, consumer satisfaction with arbitration and the potential impact the removal of arbitration would have on consumers and the public. The Association’s recommendation that the CFPB not proceed with finalizing its proposal is one of many submitted to the agency, including a recent letter from various House Republicans expressing concern that the proposal “will choke off access to products and services that help consumers manage their creditworthiness, monitor changes in their credit reports, and protect themselves against identity theft.” The influx of comments on the proposal came at the close of its comment due date, August 22, 2016.
Agencies Propose Method for Adjusting Small-Loan-Exemption Threshold under HPML Appraisal Rules
On July 22, the CFPB, the Federal Reserve, and the OCC issued a joint proposal “detailing the method that will be used to make annual inflation adjustments to the threshold for exempting small loans from higher-priced mortgage loan appraisal requirements.” The Dodd-Frank Act amended TILA to establish special appraisal requirements for higher-priced mortgage loans (HPMLs). To implement these requirements, the OCC, NCUA, CFPB, Federal Reserve, FDIC, and FHFA issued final rules that became effective on January 18, 2014. The rules exempt transactions of $25,000 or less and require that the $25,000 threshold be adjusted annually to reflect any percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The recently-issued joint proposal would memorialize the calculation method for determining such adjustments and further clarify that, if there is no annual percentage increase in the CPI-W, the exemption threshold from the prior year will not be adjusted. Comments on the proposal are due within 30 days of publication in the Federal Register.
Treasury Adopts Methodology for Monitoring the Affordability of Auto Insurance
On July 13, the Treasury Department announced that the Federal Insurance Office (FIO) adopted a methodology for monitoring the affordability of auto insurance. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the FIO is authorized to monitor the extent to which affordable personal automobile insurance is made available to traditionally underserved communities and consumers, minorities, and low- and moderate-income (LMI) persons. Pursuant to the new methodology, FIO will calculate affordability by using an affordability index that divides the average annual personal automobile liability premium by the median household income for identified majority-minority or majority-LMI ZIP codes. If the Affordability Index does not exceed to 2%, then FIO will consider personal automobile liability insurance affordable. Finally, to monitor the availability of auto insurance, FIO will obtain and analyze aggregated premium data in addition to using publicly available data through the U.S. Census Bureau.
CFPB Amends Annual Dollar Thresholds in TILA Regulations
On June 17, the CFPB announced that it adjusted dollar threshold amounts for provisions in Regulation Z, which implements TILA, under the CARD Act, HOEPA, and the Dodd-Frank Act. The CFPB is required to make adjustments based on the annual percentage change reflected in the Consumer Price Index effective June 1, 2016. For 2017, the minimum interest charge will remain $27 for the first late payment and the subsequent violation penalty safe harbor fee for 2016 was amended to $38 for the remainder of 2016 and all of 2017. The CFPB is increasing the combined points and fees trigger-threshold for compliance with HOEPA to $1,029, and the amount threshold for high-cost mortgages in 2017 will be $20,579. To satisfy the underwriting requirements under the ATR/QM rule, a covered transaction will not be considered a QM unless the combined points and fees do not exceed 3% of the total loan amount for a loan greater than or equal to $102,894; $3,087 for a loan amount greater than or equal to $61,737 but less than $102,894; 5% of the total loan amount for a loan greater than or equal to $20,579 but less than $61,737; $1,029 for a loan amount greater than or equal to $12,862 but less than $20,579; and 8% of the total loan amount for a loan amount less than $12,862. The final rule is effective January 1, 2017, except that the amendment to the subsequent violation penalty safe harbor fee amount of $38 for the remainder of 2016 takes effect upon Federal Register publication.
Republicans Attempt to Replace the Dodd-Frank Act with the Financial CHOICE Act
On June 7, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) released details of the Financial CHOICE (Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers and Entrepreneurs) Act, a Republican proposal to dismantle the Dodd-Frank Act. According to Chairman Hensarling’s remarks delivered to the Economic Club of New York, “Dodd-Frank has failed.” The goals of the proposed plan are: (i) to promote economic growth through competitive, transparent, and innovative capital markets; (ii) to provide the opportunity for every American to achieve financial independence; (iii) to protect consumers from fraud and deception as well as the loss of economic freedom; (iv) to end taxpayer bailouts of financial institutions and too big to fail institutions; (v) to manage systemic risk; (vi) to simplify in order to prevent powerful entities from taking advantage of complexity in the law; and (vii) to hold Wall Street and Washington accountable. Importantly, Section Three (“Empower Americans to achieve financial independence by fundamentally reforming the CFPB and protecting investors”) proposes, among other things, to replace the current single director structure of the CFPB with a five-member, bipartisan commission subject to congressional oversight and appropriations. Section Three further proposes to repeal indirect auto lending guidance. As part of its goal to end “too big to fail” institutions and bank bailouts, Section Two of the Act proposes to retroactively repeal FSOC’s authority to designate firms as systematically important financial institutions. Finally, in an effort to “unleash opportunities for small businesses, innovators, and job creators by facilitating capital formation,” Section Six of the Act proposes to repeal the Volcker Rule, along with other sections and titles of Dodd-Frank that limit capital formation.