Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) officials said the agency is proposing a new rule designed to aid small businesses in gaining credit access.
“Small businesses are the primary job creators and wealth builders in communities across the country,” CFPB Acting Director Dave Uejio said. “After homeownership, small business ownership is the primary means by which families and communities build wealth. Yet too often, small business development is starved for want of access to responsible, fairly priced credit. We are proposing a rule that would help us all learn how small enterprises fare when trying to access financing, and what barriers are holding them back from further prosperity.”
Uejio said the CFPB would be seeking input from small business entrepreneurs, community organizations, researchers, lenders, and others over the next three months — focusing on efforts to enhance the proposal by ensuring the final rule serves the purposes Congress intended when it mandated rulemaking 11 years ago.
“In addition to requesting comments from small business entrepreneurs on our proposal, we’re also encouraging small business entrepreneurs to share their own stories about applying for credit, through our new web portal, specifically designed for them,” Uejio said.
The CFPB noted the launch of the agency’s Tell Your Story portal enables small business entrepreneurs to share their credit application experiences as a means of helping CFPB efforts to protect small business entrepreneurs and create an equitable lending marketplace.