Statement of Policy Regarding Prohibition on Abusive Acts or Practices

The Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 (CFPA) prohibits any “covered person” or “service provider” from “engag[ing] in any unfair, deceptive, or abusive act or practice” and defines abusive conduct. An abusive act or practice: materially interferes with the ability of a consumer to understand a term or condition of a consumer financial product or service, or takes unreasonable advantage of a lack of understanding on the part of the consumer of the material risks, costs, or conditions of the product or service, the inability of the consumer to protect the interests of the consumer in selecting or using a consumer financial product or service, or the reasonable reliance by the consumer on a covered person to act in the interests of the consumer. Since the enactment of the CFPA, government enforcers and supervisory agencies have taken dozens of actions to condemn prohibited abusive conduct. This policy statement summarizes those actions and explains how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) analyzes the elements of abusiveness through relevant examples, with the goal of providing an analytical framework to fellow government enforcers and supervisory agencies and to the market for how to identify violative acts or practices. While not required under the Administrative Procedure Act, the CFPB is opting to collect comments on the policy statement and may make revisions as appropriate after reviewing feedback received.