The U.S. Chamber of Commerce this week weighed in on the conversation about what should be done about Consumer Financial Protection Bureau supervision and authority.
The bureau’s leadership has recently been called into question based on a ruling in an appeals court that raised uncertainty about the constitutionality of recess appointments made by President Obama in January 2012—the same time CFPB Director Richard Cordray was appointed by the president.
Today, the Chamber of Commerce is urging supervision reforms for the agency.
In a letter to Director, David Hirschmann, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness urges the CFPB to consider changes toward helping businesses and American households.
“The effect of this continued uncertainty and inefficiency is not simply to impose excessive, unjustified costs on legitimate businesses seeking to comply with the law—it directly constrains the lending, especially lending to small businesses that our economy desperately needs in order to grow and create jobs for the millions of Americans who remain unemployed,” the letter states.
Among the suggestions toward improvement, the Chamber points to training of supervision staff, consistent approaches to examinations, stopping the involvement of enforcement personnel in the exam process, data demands and closing examinations succinctly and uniformly.
“While several companies have reported good experiences with individual examiners or examination teams, the majority have reported that the examination process is confusing, unnecessarily duplicative, inconsistent, and open-ended; in fact the “process” is difficult to discern,” Hirschmann writes.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
