The CFPB Makes Its Case

CFPB Director Cordray

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its Semi-Annual Report. Given that the Bureau is under attack by Republicans in Congress and in the Trump Administration, one can read this as a defense (a strong defense, I might editorialize) for the work that the Bureau has done on behalf of consumers. The core of the Bureau’s argument is that it levels the playing field for consumers when they deal with financial services companies:

The Bureau has continued to expand its efforts to serve and protect consumers in the financial marketplace. The Bureau seeks to serve as a resource on the macro level, by writing clear rules of the road and enforcing consumer financial protection laws in ways that improve the consumer financial marketplace, and on the micro level, by helping individual consumers get responses to their complaints about issues with financial products and services. While the various divisions of the Bureau play different roles in carrying out the Bureau’s mission, they all work together to protect and educate consumers, help level the playing field for participants, and fulfill the Bureau’s statutory obligations and mission under the Dodd-Frank Act. In all of its work, the Bureau strives to act in ways that are fair, reasonable, and transparent.

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When Federal consumer financial protection law is violated, the Bureau’s Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending Division are committed to holding the responsible parties accountable. In the six months covered by this report, our supervisory actions resulted in financial institutions providing approximately $6.2 million in redress to over 16,549 consumers. During that timeframe, we also have announced enforcement actions that resulted in orders for approximately $200 million in total relief for consumers who fell victim to various violations of consumer financial protection laws, along with over $43 million in civil money penalties. We brought numerous enforcement actions for various violations of the Dodd-Frank Act and other laws, including actions against Mastercard and UniRush for breakdowns that left tens of thousands of economically vulnerable RushCard users unable to access their own money to pay for basic necessities; two separate actions against CitiFinancial and CitiMortgage for keeping consumers in the dark about options to avoid foreclosure; and against three reverse mortgage companies for deceptive advertisements, including claiming that consumers who obtained reverse mortgages could not lose their homes. We also brought two separate actions against credit reporting agencies Equifax and TransUnion for deceiving consumers about the usefulness and actual cost of credit scores they sold to consumers, and for luring consumers into costly recurring payments for credit products; and an action against creditor reporting agency Experian for deceiving consumers about the usefulness of credit scores it sold to consumers. The Bureau also continued to develop and refine its nationwide supervisory program for depository and nondepository financial institutions, through which those institutions are examined for compliance with Federal consumer financial protection law. (10-11, footnotes omitted)

Anyone who was around during the late 1990s and early 2000s would know that consumers are much better off with the Bureau than without it. This report provides some of the reasons why that is the case.

Solving Complexity in Consumer Credit

Kathleen Engel posted Can Consumer Law Solve the Problem of Complexity in U.S. Consumer Credit Products? to SSRN. The abstract reads,

People like to know and understand the total cost of credit products they are considering. They also like to know and understand products’ terms and features. Given these preferences, issuers of credit should market products with transparent features and simple pricing. That is not the case. In fact, over the last few decades we have seen a plethora of complex terms in products such as mortgage loans, credit cards, and prepaid debit cards.

As credit products have become ever more complex, consumers have more choices and can select products that satisfy their particular needs and preferences. No longer are borrowers limited to a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. If they know they will be moving in a few years, a 3-year fixed-rate mortgage with a low interest rate that converts to a 27-year adjustable rate mortgage based on the LIBOR might be the right product for them. However, for borrowers who do not understand the complexities of a 3-27 mortgage loan, the low, initial interest rate could be a costly lure. Confusion is commonplace. In one study giving consumers a choice between two credit cards that varied only in terms of the annual fee and the interest rate, forty percent of the participants chose the more expensive card.

One would expect that consumers, who cannot decipher terms and calculate the cost of complex products, would turn to those with easy-to-understand terms. There are some simple products on the market. Instead, consumers often misperceive that the more complex products are less expensive than the simple ones. They, thus, shun the products that would be in their best interest.

In this paper, I explain why borrowers make sub-optimal choices when selecting credit products. I then analyze whether extant laws could be used to address obfuscating complexity. I ultimately conclude that policy-makers should look to extra-legal remedies to protect consumers against exploitative complexity.

I find those “extra-legal remedies” to be the most interesting part of this paper. Engel writes,

The approach I find most appealing is to use digital technology to help consumers make decisions. A software program would act like an agent, helping consumers determine what they could afford, what product would best meet their needs, and, lastly, would generate bids from providers of the product. Several goals motivate this idea: (1) the approach is preventative; (2) it does not require the courts to interpret vague standards; (3) it is less costly than litigation; (4) it protects unsophisticated consumers without requiring them to become sophisticated; and (5) it permits consumers to “pull” the information they need to select a product, rather than having issuers “push” hundreds of pages of information to them on multiple products. (24-25)

The paper does not explore how consumers would access this “choice agent,” but it is certainly an idea worth exploring. As some of my recent posts suggest, it is hard to rationally regulate for the entire population of consumers as they are a heterogeneous bunch. But it is important that we keep trying. Engel’s paper has some interesting ideas that are worth pursuing further.