Compliance Officer Call to Action
By Deb Jost
We recently came across the following Action Alert on the American Bankers Association website. We also encourage you to unite with your professional colleagues and write to your Congressional representatives to correct the Administration's false premise that banks and banking regulators do not have a culture of consumer protection.
As the ABA page states, as bank compliance officers, you are aware and are constantly working to keep pace with increasing regulatory standards put forth by Congress and the agencies. If passed, H.R. 3126 will create a much larger bureaucracy and will pile on more regulatory burdens on banks that already have deep and effective compliance programs. Under H.R. 3126, every bank would be forced to offer federally approved standard financial products and services. This would impose uniform products on every bank without regard to local communities, economies, or needs of customers.
Bankers Compliance Consulting is proud of the efforts of our client compliance officers in promoting a consumer protection culture within their banks and assuring their institutions conduct customer transactions responsibly in compliance with consumer laws and regulations. Compliance officer efforts are valued not only for the professional expertise in managing consumer compliance risk, but also for the leadership you show in training and supporting frontline staff in their customer interaction and service delivery.
For both of these reasons, we appeal to compliance professionals to get involved in the advocacy for improved consumer protection through stronger non-bank supervision and better balanced and accountable prudential regulation of banks. The Administration's structural proposal for an independent consumer agency will only undermine comprehensive banking oversight, generate more conflict between the twin regulatory missions of financial soundness and consumer protection, and result in greater compliance complexity to the detriment of simplifying customer transactions and promoting consumer understanding.