Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Provides Education and Oversight

Congress established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) with the central mission of supervising banks, credit unions and other financial companies, and researching and analyzing consumer financial markets to ensure that consumers remain adequately informed to make sound financial decisions. A prime CFPB objective is enforcing lending laws and educating consumers and lenders on the risks, benefits, and laws of all forms of lending and debt.

The CFPB has been charged with the following core functions:

• Implementing and enforcing federal consumer financial laws;
• Reviewing business practices to ensure that financial services providers are following the law;
• Monitoring the marketplace and taking appropriate action to make sure markets work as transparently as they can for consumers; and
• Establishing a toll-free consumer hotline and website for complaints and questions about consumer financial products and services.

According to Elizabeth Warren, who helped create the Bureau, “We all lose when consumers cannot readily determine whether they can afford to pay back their loans. We all lose when lenders routinely sell credit in ways that hide the risks and costs. We all lose when a broken consumer credit system magnifies risks throughout the economy. We can do better.”

The Bureau will have many effects on the laws surrounding cash advances and credit cards. “For consumer protection, this is really the biggest and most important change that’s occurred for several decades,” said Willard Ogburn, longtime executive director of the National Consumer Law Center.”

The CFPB is the first new government agency in almost 10 years. It is the first consumer-focused agency since the early ‘70s. The CFPB has already begun one major initiative to combine two mortgage forms into one which would then be more easily understood by applicants before signing. According to Warren, though, the agency will not focus entirely on large strategies. In fact, the Bureau has reported that a full quarter of its budget will go towards answering consumer complaints about scams and other potential problems.

“The way to make big change in a marketplace is not with a single blow. It’s with thousands of small pushes in the same direction,” she said. “For us, the same direction is toward making the price clear, making the risk clear and making it easier to compare products.”

In order to keep its consumers the most informed in the industry, CashAdvance.com tasked its team of financial experts with creating a cornucopia of educational resources. In line with the CFPB’s objectives, the Scam Advisory center with a user forum and Scam Alerts section has been created for the explicit purpose of teaching users how to identify potential scams and what they can do to protect themselves. Supplemental articles on scams cover both old tricks, such as check fraud, and new ones such as ATM skimming and malware.

CashAdvance.com also works to update the Consumer Resource section with the latest details on the payday loan industry for every state in the country. By accessing the Resource for their home state, consumers can find out all the latest regulations on loans, the contact information for the regulatory bodies, and even alternatives to payday loans.

Supplementing both of these resources is the Finance News section. Here consumers will learn all the latest news affecting the world of finances. Also included is a news category on personal finance in which readers can learn tips on saving money, minimizing the risks of a payday loan, and planning for the future.

The creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promises to empower “consumers to take more control over their economic lives.” CashAdvance.com is proud to work towards that same end.