Americans for Financial Reform and National Consumer Law Center officials recently joined other public interest groups in expressing opposition to proposals espousing reduced fintech regulatory measures.
Officials were critical of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) plan to eliminate consumer-protection rules, especially for fintech companies, arguing the agency does not have the authority to create potentially unlimited exemptions from the very regulations that the CFPB is obligated to enforce.
“The reckless and unlawful scope of the CFPB’s proposal is breathtaking,” Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, said. “The CFPB has no authority to allow trials that go on for years and years and that allow entire industries to skip important consumer disclosures, such as the total cost of a loan or the required notice that the loan price was marked up due to information on the consumer’s credit report.”
Saunders said the CFPB’s proposal would also not be confined to consumer testing, which recruits consumers to review and react to sample disclosures as if they were entering into a transaction. But would allow companies to experiment with or dispense with disclosures in real transactions with real consumers.
“The agency would allow companies to stop providing information that people need to help avoid predatory products and decide what works best for themselves,” Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform, said. “It is one more example of the current leadership at the agency undermining basic consumer protections and doing favors for the industry, rather than carrying out the CFPB mission to actually protect consumers.”