CFPB Regs Issued
By Amy Kudlacek
As part of the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB assumed rulemaking authority for certain consumer financial regulations (17 in all). As of today, most if not all of these Regulations have been transferred from other regulatory agencies to the CFPB’s Chapter X. A good example, RESPA (24 CFR 3500) no longer belongs to HUD and is now 12 CFR 1024. The CFPB will also be implementing a new numbering system in the 1000 series. All regulations will correspond with the number of the alphabet: Reg B is 12 CFR 1002, Reg C is 12 CFR 1003 and Reg Z is 12 CFR 1026. All those years of memorizing regulatory citations down the drain.
All of the Regulations transferred in the last couple weeks are interim final rules that took effect on December 30, 2011. The comment periods; however, remain open until various dates in February. This means that you were required to comply by December 30th but the CFPB can still “tweak” the requirements before they become final-final.
There have been no substantive changes made to these Regs so far. The only change worth noting is in Reg Z where what we knew to be 226.5a (credit card rules) and 226.5b (HELOCs) were moved to 1026.60 and 1026.40, respectively. For more on these transfers, see our January newsletter.