The New Consumer Bureau: a To-Do List

Wall Street Journal
August 28, 2010
Blumenthal, Karen

The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau must quickly begin writing rules to regulate checking accounts, credit cards, and education and home loans if it hopes to stave off critics. The bureau will first have to study reverse mortgages, private education-loan practices, why consumers who buy credit scores get numbers different from the ones lenders get, and whether arbitration is the right way to settle financial disputes, according to congressional mandates. Experts have suggested that since those topics could take years to examine, the bureau should consider addressing credit report errors and the process consumers must use to correct them. Consumer advocates say the credit reporting agencies do not play referee and simply defer to lenders, and creditors that often disagree with complaints force consumers to take further action. Other topics that should be addressed include extending built-in protections against fraudulent charges to prepaid cards, not just credit and debit cards; improving the transparency of student loans; speeding up complaint response times related to financial issues; and other protections against other financial practices.
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