In the ever-fluctuating realm of financial protection, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Summer 2023 Supervisory Highlights serve as a crucial guidepost. Focusing on their primary findings from July 2022 through March 2023, the report draws our attention to the CFPB’s vigorous interpretations of its empowering authority.
The CFPB has been leveraging its “dormant” authority that enables supervision over nonbanks that it assesses to present “risks to consumers”. This dormant mandate provides the Bureau a wide scope to monitor entities that conventionally might not fall under its purview. Such an approach reaffirms the Bureau’s commitment to safeguard consumers from potential financial detriment.
In addition to brandishing its dormant authority, the bureau has been incessantly invoking its authority to deter unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices (UDAAP). This ever-broadening application of UDAAP allows the CFPB to penetrate sectors not traditionally within its mission scope, thereby underscoring the expansive jurisdiction it intends to exercise.
These developments, summarized in the Summer 2023 Supervisory Highlights, stand as testimony to the Bureau’s assertive stances on its authority. The CFPB’s ongoing commitment to exercise such wide-ranging powers signals its dynamic approach towards consumer financial protection.
With this assertive approach, corporations and law firms must be ever cognizant of the evolving interpretations and applications of the Bureau’s authority in order to ensure compliance. Furthermore, they should regularly review these supervisory highlights as they exemplify the CFPB’s most recent concerns, enforcement trends, and areas of focus which can provide valuable insights for navigating this ever-changing regulatory landscape.