Bankers often want fairness to banks, but they forget that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is supposed to work for consumers, not the industry. The bureau ought to be focused on a single goal: watching out for American consumers in the market for consumer financial products and services. The consumer bureau is supposed to be put consumers first, not banks and other financial industries.
After dropping cases against predatory payday lenders, and overhauling the bureau to limit its reach, Mick Mulvaney is considering shutting the public’s access to the bureau’s Consumer Complaint Database, where the public can read the complaints filed by consumers against financial companies. Mulvaney attended an American Bankers Association conference in April and used an industry talking point claiming that he did not see anything in the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation that said he had to “run a Yelp for financial services sponsored by the federal government.”
Industry associations agree with Mulvaney. The American Bankers Association and Consumer Bankers Association submitted letters to the consumer bureau in early June, urging it to cease publication of complaint data.
In the letters, banks claim that “the publication of raw complaint narratives subjects companies to inaccurate and unfair criticism that is often subjective and potentially misleading without institutional proprietary context or facts,” declaring that unverified consumer complaints are unreliable.
However, these concerns are based on banks’ perspective, not consumers’ perspective. With a database that accepts hundreds and thousands of complaints from consumers on a daily basis, it is inevitable to include inaccurate criticisms, but it still creates a fair and transparent platform for consumers’ voice to be heard. And the resolutions of each complaint is included in the database, creating an accountability system for the bureau to show timely and fair resolutions.
In the letters, banks also claimed that the consumer bureau has no statutory authority to publish consumer complaints, echoing what Mulvaney said at the ABA conference. Aiming to look for loopholes in the bureau’s statutory book, banks are throwing out far-fetched arguments to question the bureau’s legitimacy and procedure, helping give Mulvaney a paper trail of industry concerns to help him in his mission to stop the consumer bureau from doing its job.
Ending the public’s access to the consumer bureau’s complaint database puts the voices of bankers over consumers. It would turn the consumer protection bureau into an banker protection bureau by keeping consumer complaints hidden from view. That is against the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
