Mulvaney Hints At CFPB’s Future In Bank Regulation

The acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Mick Mulvaney, could allow other regulators to be in charge of supervisory matter, in an attempt to prevent duplications within government agencies and to reduce the burden for financial firms when it comes to exams.

According to a report in American Banker, Mulvaney’s comments suggest that regulators –including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board – could have more of a role in supervising matters of compliance related to consumers.

“There’s no reason why folks have to go through sequential regulations for the same thing,” Mulvaney said at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event. “We’ve already started to sit down with some of the other prudential regulators. I don’t see why we can’t work together on supervision.”

According to Mulvaney, under his lead, the CFPB will no longer pursue enforcement of companies simply because the officials don’t like it. “We don’t get to decide who the bad guys are,” he said. The report noted that while under the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB was in charge of consumer regulations when it came to banks, thrifts and credit unions that have more than $10 billion in assets. Prudential agencies are in charge of supervising banks to ensure they are safe and sound.

Mulvaney’s comments mark a big shift, noted the report. “I’m cautiously optimistic that of all our discussions with co-regulators, there’s a desire for us to work together,” he said. “The CFPB may have in the past seen itself as separate and apart [from other regulators], and if you’ve heard some of the criticism about some of the other regulators, we’ve heard [the CFPB] didn’t cause the financial crisis, [other regulators] did.”