In releasing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s strategic plan for 2018-22 today, Acting Director Mick Mulvaney emphasized that the agency intends to hew closely to the Dodd-Frank Act, thus providing “a touchstone with a fixed meaning that should serve as a bulwark against the misuse of our unparalleled powers,” he said. “Just as important, it provides clarity and certainty to market participants.”
The bureau identified three goals: first, to ensure that all consumers have access to markets for consumer financial products and services; second, to “implement and enforce the law consistently to ensure that markets for consumer financial products and services are fair, transparent, and competitive”; and third, to ensure “operational excellence.”
To achieve the first goal, the CFPB identified three objectives: providing information and education to consumers; “regularly identify[ing]” outdated, burdensome or unnecessary regulations; and ensuring transparent and efficient financial market operation. Toward the second goal, the bureau said it would continue protecting consumers from UDAAPs and discrimination, as well as “enforc[ing] federal consumer financial law consistently, without regard to the status of a person as a depository institution, in order to promote fair competition.”
