Bankers’ Group Supports Bill To Reform CFPB

The Consumer Bankers Association (CBA), a retail banking trade association, announced its support of the House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal year 2017 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill being passed.

In a statement released on Thursday (June 9), CBA President and CEO Richard Hunt said:

“We applaud House appropriators for taking steps to make needed improvements to the CFPB on behalf of consumers. Chief among the reforms is the creation of a five-person, bipartisan board that would preserve it as a stable, strong and effective regulator, regardless of a President Trump or Clinton. CBA also appreciates the committee requiring the bureau to take a second look at its arbitration and small-dollar lending proposals before consumers are potentially harmed. We are grateful the committee sees the wisdom in these commonsense improvements and encourage the full House and Senate to follow their lead in protecting consumers.”

There remains an ongoing controversy over the funding of, and even existence of, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The financial industry itself has pushed for scrapping the laws, on the assertion that it has cost millions of dollars to comply and that capital could have been put, arguably, to better use. The banks have been treading more cautiously, with an eye on revamps rather than wholesale overhauls.

Predictably, opponents of striking down Dodd-Frank state that the door might be left open to a repeat of some of the egregious financial activities and lending decisions that predated the financial crisis.

As it stands now, Dodd-Frank, the legislation that stands as a monument to preventing another financial crisis, is becoming monumental itself, clocking in at 22,000 pages and counting of rules and regulations governing every facet of banking life.

The end result — though there is hardly an end in sight — is that the regulatory arm of banking has become the fastest-growing subset of the financial industry, with hiring at a pace of thousands of new staffers and an eye on keeping in lockstep with the regulatory mandates.