Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Myth: The CFPA would duplicate the work of existing agencies, and increase regulatory burden on businesses. Reality: The new Agency would consolidate the consumer protection rule-making and enforcement that is currently scattered across several agencies. The functions would not be duplicated; rather, they would be stream-lined into a single agency, thereby reducing regulatory burden and expense. Myth: Giving the CFPA...

Read a condensed version of this report (PDF) Introduction For too long the responsibility for protecting consumers has been fragmented among various federal regulators whose primary focus was the safety and soundness of the banking system. Consumer protection often went neglected, if anything, an afterthought or a box to check. Federal regulators' failure to restrain abuses that led to today's...

A proposal for improving our financial system An essential component of the Obama Administration's proposal for improving oversight of our financial system would correct the current lack of adequate consumer protection standards that has plagued our financial system, and imperiled our economy. A new Consumer Financial Products Agency ("CFPA") would implement sensible protections and make sure that companies follow them...

EXCERPT Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bachus, members of the Committee: Thank you for inviting the Center for Responsible Lending to discuss consumer financial products reform – a fundamental component of the effort to modernize and repair our financial regulatory system. Over the past decade, federal bank regulators looked the other way as responsible loans were crowded out of the market...

Reckless lending practices that became rampant in recent years have devastated the economy, costing Americans billions of dollars in lost wealth and resulting in the weakest economy since the great Depression. Unfortunately, the regulators overseeing bank safety and consumer protections fell down on the job. Congress has taken a number of actions to investigate the causes of the financial meltdown...