About The Bureau

Yesterday we issued our financial report for fiscal year 2012, as required by the Dodd-Frank Act. The financial report has two main parts. The first part includes a narrative description of the bureau, including our mission, operating units, main activities, performance, and results. It provides some financial analysis and a description of our operating environment. The second section includes financial statements, notes, and the auditor’s report. Throughout the report, we have included assurances from the CFPB Director and Chief Financial Officer of our internal control over financial reporting.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is the CFPB’s financial auditor. For the second consecutive year, GAO rendered an unqualified – or “clean” – audit opinion of the CFPB’s financial statements. An unqualified opinion is the best result of a financial statement audit. It means that:

• we have presented the CFPB’s financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP);
• we applied those principles in a consistent basis; and,
• our financial statements include all of the information necessary to present them fairly.

GAO noted no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in CFPB’s internal controls and cited no instances of noncompliance with laws and regulations.

Read the report to learn more about our financial performance.

Whether you’re an undergraduate, recent grad or grad student, we want you to bring your skills and drive here. As a growing agency, we’re looking to bring on energetic, dedicated people for internships and full-time positions across our teams. With hundreds of potential opportunities available, there is something for you here. See what’s available now: consumerfinance.gov/jobs.

You’ll have the opportunity to use your current skills, and gain new ones, while helping to make financial markets work for millions of Americans and their families. Join us as we work to attract the next generation of government leaders!

Friday, October 26, 2012
1-3 p.m.
Hilton New York Hotel
1335 Ave. of the Americas
New York, New York 10019

Learn more and register today: Link: http://linkd.in/TycxnU

In the past year we have taken big steps toward making consumer financial markets work better for consumers and responsible companies, and consumer complaints have played a major role. We began with credit card complaints in July of 2011, and as time passed, we added complaints about mortgages, bank accounts and services, private student loans, vehicle, and other consumer loans.

We are proud to announce that, starting today, we are accepting complaints about credit reports.

Credit reporting touches the financial lives of nearly each and every American. Credit reports affect whether or not you are able to get a credit card, a home loan, an auto loan, or a student loan, the ability to rent an apartment or get hired, and even tasks as simple as getting a cell phone or electricity for your home. It also can affect how affordable or expensive those things are for you.

Starting today, we can help consumers with individual-level complaint assistance on issues with their credit report. The types of complaints we can work on include:

• Incorrect information on a credit report
• A consumer reporting agency’s investigation
• Improper use of a credit report,
• Being unable to get a copy of a credit score or file, and
• Problems with credit monitoring or identify protection services.

Before you file

If you believe that there’s incorrect information on your credit report, or if you have an issue with a credit reporting company’s investigation start by filing a dispute and getting a response directly from the credit reporting company itself.

There are important consumer rights guaranteed by federal consumer financial law that are best preserved by you first going through the credit reporting company’s complaint process.

After you file a complaint with the credit reporting company, if you are dissatisfied with the resolution, file a complaint with us.

Every complaint we receive helps us understand the challenges facing consumers, and they inform and shape our priorities. Reading your complaints about credit reporting will complement work we have already started in this area, including conducting a study comparing credit scores sold to creditors and those sold to consumers and beginning to supervise of consumer reporting agencies.

Scott Pluta is the Assistant Director for the Office of Consumer Response at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Update 11/27/12: We issued a bulletin about changes to the rule we intend to propose in December 2012.

Our goal is to make financial markets work. A crucial part of reaching that goal is making sure that honest businesses – particularly small businesses – have what they need to understand and comply with our new regulations, which are designed both to help consumers and make a fair playing field for companies that play by the rules.

Today, we’re releasing our small business compliance guide for our international electronic money transfers rule (also known as the remittance rule), which will take effect on February 7, 2013. This guide will make it easier to understand the new requirements. Although the guide is not a substitute for the rule, it highlights issues that businesses, in particular small businesses and those that work with them, should consider while implementing the new requirements.

We need your help to find areas in the guide that could be better.

How can I provide feedback?

Email comments about the guide to CFPB_RemittanceGuide@cfpb.gov. Your feedback is crucial to making sure the guide is as helpful as possible. We would love to hear your thoughts on its usefulness and readability, and about improvements you think are needed.

We would especially like to know:

1) What kind of business do you operate?
2) Generally, what is the size of your business?
3) Where are you located?
4) How useful did you find the guide for understanding the rule?
5) How useful did you find the guide for implementing the rule at your business?
6) Do you have any suggestions for making the guide better, such as additional implementation tips?

What are some other compliance resources?

We are working on a number of projects to help industry understand and comply with the new requirements, including:

• Issuing a list of countries and other areas to which a particular exception to the rule’s disclosure requirements applies,
• Hosting a live webinar on October 16th,
• Answering specific questions at CFPB_RemittanceRule@cfpb.gov and at (202) 435-7700, and
• Releasing the small business guide.

Questions?

You can reach us at (202) 435-7700.

We’re excited to announce that we’re no longer in beta with our consumer complaint database.

We launched the beta version on June 19th publishing individual-level consumer complaint data — a first for a federal financial regulator.

Since that time, people have been evaluating and sharing the data on social media and in new apps. Today, we are taking additional steps to expand this service to the American people.

First, and as promised, we are releasing consumer credit card complaint data back to December 1, 2011 in the Consumer Complaint Database.

Second, thanks to all of the great feedback and insight we’ve gotten, we are removing the database’s beta tag. While we will continue to expand functionality, data fields, and the “look and feel” of the database, after performing for three months as designed and without incident, the database is no longer a beta product.

One potential area for database expansion is the inclusion of additional products and services. Over the summer we asked for public comment on this idea and got a wide range of comments from a range of interested stakeholders. We are in the process of evaluating those comments and anticipate a final Bureau decision in early 2013.

In addition to expanding the scope of the products covered by the database we continue to evaluate, among other things, the release of consumer narratives, the potential for normalization of the data to make apples-to-apples comparisons more user friendly, and the expansion of functionality to improve user experience.

Thank you for your help in getting the tool where it is today – we’re excited for what you’ll do with the data next.

Scott Pluta is the Assistant Director for Consumer Response at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

We have an expansive, vital mission: to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Americans. But, how do we do that with limited resources?

We’ll accomplish our mission by setting goals, establishing strategies, and measuring performance. Our strategic plan outlines this information and describes how we will focus our resources on the areas where we can have the biggest impact.

Check out our draft
Today it’s just a draft – take a look at our strategic plan for 2013 – 2018.

What do you think?
We want your thoughts and ideas on how to improve our plan. Weigh in by emailing your comments on the plan to StrategyPlanComments@cfpb.gov by October 25, 2012.