A delay in certain provisions of its payday rule is slated for final action in June by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to details of the agency’s spring 2019 regulatory agenda. But the agenda, announced in a CFPB blog post Wednesday, provides no specific timeline for final action on proposed changes to the rule as contemplated in the bureau’s February 2019 notice of proposed rulemaking.
Announced Feb. 6, the two CFPB payday proposals revise the “Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans” regulation that was finalized in 2017 and stayed from implementation by a federal judge pending the rule’s “reconsideration.”
In reconsidering the rule, the bureau proposed to rescind provisions that:
- treat as “an unfair and abusive practice” a lender’s provision of a covered short-term or longer-term balloon-payment loan, including payday and vehicle title loans, without reasonably determining that consumers have the ability to repay those loans according to their terms;
- prescribe mandatory underwriting requirements for making the ability-to-repay determination;
- exempt certain loans from the mandatory underwriting requirements; and
- establish related definitions, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements.
In tandem with the proposed rule changes, the CFPB also issued a proposal in February to delay implementation of the above-noted payday rule provisions until Nov. 19, 2020. The delay is slated for final action in June, or “this summer,” according to a related blog post Wednesday; that post indicated a final determination on the rule “reconsideration” would be issued “thereafter.”
The bureau’s Spring 2019 agenda lists areas of regulation that are in pre-rule, proposed, and final rulemaking stages. Business lending data has found its way back onto the agency’s active agenda.
The CFPB issued a request for information (RFI) on this topic in 2017. “The Bureau had moved this rulemaking to long-term action status in light of other responsibilities but is now in the process of reactivating it,” the agenda states. This rulemaking relates to Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank), which amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) to require financial institutions to report information concerning credit applications made by women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses.
Also noted on the Spring 2019 agenda is a potential rulemaking to increase to $10 billion or less the asset size of certain institutions exempt from escrow requirements related to higher-priced mortgage loans. “Pre-rule” activity on this change, called for under the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (EGRRCPA, S. 2155), is slated for November.
The agenda also addresses PACE loans, remittance transfers (an RFI was issued recently), the Expedited Funds Availability Act (EFTA, Regulation CC), and various activities related to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).