The CFPB has issued a request for information that seeks comment on its inherited regulations and inherited rulemaking authorities.  Comments on the RFI must be received on or before 90 days after the date the RFI is published in the Federal Register, which the CFPB expects to occur on March 26, 2018.

As used in the RFI, the “Inherited Regulations” consist of “the statutory authority and regulations that were transferred to the Bureau by title X of the Dodd-Frank Act” and also “include the regulations that the Bureau restated in Title 12, Chapter X of the Code of Federal Regulations.”  Such regulations were issued by other agencies pursuant to the rulemaking authority transferred to the CFPB by Dodd-Frank.

The CFPB seeks feedback on all aspects of the Inherited Regulations, including the following:

• Aspects of the Inherited Regulations that should be tailored to institutions of particular types or sizes, create unintended consequences, overlap or conflict with other laws or regulations so as to make compliance difficult or particularly burdensome, are incompatible or misaligned with new technologies, or could be modified to provide consumers more protection from identity theft

• Changes the CFPB could make to the Inherited Regulations to more effectively meet the statutory purposes and objectives set forth in the federal consumer financial laws and the CFPB’s goals for a particular Inherited Regulation in the first instance

• Changes the CFPB could make to the Inherited Regulations that would advance the CFPB’s statutory purposes set forth in Section 1021 of Dodd-Frank

• Pilots, field tests, demonstrations, or other activities the CFPB could launch to better quantify benefits and costs of potential revisions to the Inherited Regulations or to make compliance with the Inherited Regulations more efficient and effective

• Areas where the CFPB has inherited rulemaking authority that it has not exercised but where rulemaking would be beneficial and align with the purposes and objectives of applicable federal consumer financial laws

The new RFI represents the ninth in a series of RFIs announced by Mr. Mulvaney.  The subjects of the CFPB’s first eight RFIs and their comment deadlines are as follows:​

• Processes surrounding civil investigative demands and investigational hearings-March 27, 2018

• Administrative adjudication processes-April 6, 2018

• Enforcement processes-April 13, 2018

• Supervision program-May 21, 2018

• External engagement-May 29, 2018

• Public reporting of consumer complaint information-June 4, 2018

• Rulemaking processes-June 7, 2018

• Adopted regulations-June 19, 2018

(The initial comment deadlines for the first three RFIs listed above were extended this week to the dates indicated.)

In its press release announcing the latest RFI, the CFPB stated that the next RFI in the series will be issued next week and will address the CFPB’s guidance and implementation support.