Compliance Blog

Written by Steve Van Beek

Yesterday, the CFPB announced - via blog post - that they were issuing a final rule to amend Regulation E to remove the federal "on the machine" requirement for ATM fee disclosures.  Kudos to the CFPB for reading our blog post from last week and taking action to remove this unnecessary regulatory burden (the CFPB's inaccurate regulation; Congress had removed the requirement from the Electronic Funds Transfer Act three months ago).

Of course, it wouldn't be a CFPB blog post without a plea for consumers to submit a complaint.  Here is how the blog post ends:

"Congress recently amended the law about ATM fee disclosures to eliminate the sticker requirement. Now the CFPB is following the law by changing these rules. While this change means that consumers may no longer see a sticker on the ATM telling them that the ATM owner may charge a fee, the information about these charges, including the amount of the charge, will still appear on the ATM screen or a printout. The consumer will be able to cancel the ATM transaction without paying a dime.

At the CFPB, we work to ensure that consumers have the information they need to make informed decisions about their financial products and services. If you have had a confusing experience with ATM fees, you may contact the CFPB to tell us your story or submit a complaint."

Importantly, the final rule will be effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register. While it took the CFPB three months to follow Congress' command, at least they took the appropriate step and made the rule effective immediately.

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Cost of Compliance.  Earlier in the week, the CFPB issued a blog post indicating they were studying the cost of complying with consumer financial regulations.  Below is the language from the post:

"We’re studying the costs of complying with consumer finance regulations

Banks, credit unions, and other financial services providers are concerned with compliance costs – how much it costs to comply with financial regulations – and we’re interested as well. Regulations can have many benefits for consumers, but the benefits sometimes come at a cost.

What we want to know
What are the extent and nature of compliance costs?

So, what are we doing?
Our Research, Markets, and Regulations team is studying the costs related to rules we inherited from other agencies. We want to increase public understanding of compliance costs. As a first step, we will talk to banks across the country about the costs they incur to comply with consumer regulations for deposit products and services. These include products like checking accounts and debit cards, which nearly all banks offer and most consumers use. Through our research, we hope to become better and smarter regulators."

Now, you may be thinking - with all the new regulatory requirements - the last thing we have time to do is spend time and resources quantifying the time and resources we're expending on complying with regulations!!

A completely understandable point. But, keep in mind that you don't need to respond directly to the CFPB or conduct a full analysis of your information.  NAFCU's research division collects information on a monthly basis from NAFCU members and uses this information to help inform NAFCU comment letters, letters to the Hill and outreach to the media.

Each month, NAFCU's research division sends out an Economic and CU Monitor survey which is summarized and reported in the Economic and CU Monitor.

So, if you don't have the time or resources to provide a full "compliance cost" evaluation - consider going to NAFCU’s Economic and CU Monitor page and complete the online survey each month. It only takes 15 minutes and you don't need to answer questions that aren't applicable or that you where you don't have the information at hand.

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Have a great weekend!  And for all those at Compliance School this week - thanks for an outstanding week!