On November 25, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it plans to push back three key rulemakings until next year. These rulemakings center on overdraft protection, payday lending, and debt collection. The agenda released by the CFPB stated that it would issue proposals on these issues in the first seven months of 2015. This likely means that the rules will not be finalized until 2016 at the earliest.
This represents a delay from the previous timeline presented by the CFPB in May when it predicted to have payday and overdraft rulemaking proposed in September and December 2014, respectively. This delay indicates that the industry may have a temporary break from new CFPB regulations after a period in which the CFPB has implemented a litany of new rules governing mortgages, automobile lending, and credit cards.
The announcement stated that the CFPB received more than 23,000 comments earlier this year in response to its advanced notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the debt collection industry. This could be responsible for the delay in issuing this rule. The CFPB stated that it is “developing a survey to obtain information from consumers about their experiences with debt collectors and are engaged in qualitative testing to determine what information would be useful for consumers to have about debt collection and how that information should be provided to them.”
These rules are highly anticipated as they could have a substantial impact on the banking, lending, and debt collection industries.