If you thought the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made more headlines in 2015 than ever before, you were right.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the CFPB brought nearly twice as many enforcement actions during 2015 than it did in 2014.
From the Wall Street Journal:
CFPB officials said that in 2015, the bureau handled 59 cases in which companies settled allegations of wrongdoing and 11 cases that led to lawsuits. That compares with 23 settlements and 11 lawsuits for 2014, and 21 settlements and seven lawsuits for 2013.
The sharp increase reflects the growth in the number of investigators, examiners and administrative staff, as well as maturing of the bureau’s practices and policies four years after it was established under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, said Tony Alexis, the CFPB’s director of enforcement.
During 2015 alone, the CFPB handed out significant fines to many companies within the housing finance space. Here’s just a short sampling of the headlines that the CFPB generated here on HousingWire:
CFPB, DOJ fine Hudson City $27M for mortgage discrimination violations
CFPB fines Residential Credit Solutions $1.5 million for illegal mortgage servicing
CFPB Director: PHH Corp. took kickbacks for mortgage insurance referrals
CFPB orders RPM Mortgage to pay $19M for steering consumers to costlier mortgages
CFPB secures $27.7 million judgment against foreclosure relief scammers
CFPB sues Nationwide Biweekly for deceptive mortgage practices
And according to the Wall Street Journal report, there will be more of those types of headlines in 2016.
Again from the WSJ:
In an interview, Mr. Alexis declined to say whether the bureau’s activities would continue to grow at a similar pace in 2016, but he said the agency’s supervision and enforcement operations are now “fully functional.”
The WSJ report also states that Alexis told a legal conference last week that the CFPB plans to be “particularly active” in 2016, with a particular focus on debt collection, mortgage servicing and student loan servicing.
