The federal banking agencies are working to reduce excessive supervisory burdens through automation and shared data submission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger said today at the American Bankers Association’s Regulatory Compliance Conference in New Orleans. “We’re going to speed up the process and look more collectively at our examination processes,” said Kraninger, who has just begun a two-year term as chairman of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. “It’s incumbent on us to ensure we don’t impose unmanageable burdens while performing our duties.”
In her first-ever public remarks to an audience of financial services professionals, she specifically said that she is working to “automate many of the things that are perhaps the biggest pain points” and added that the FFIEC agencies are “working very closely on a joint data intake system.” She added that the CFPB is coordinating with other prudential regulators in its exams. “Is there an opportunity for the bureau to do a much more narrow exam looking at similar data at a similar point in time?” she posited in a Q&A with ABA Chief Policy Officer Naomi Camper.
Kraninger also shed some light on her approach to enforcement, which she described as a critical tool at the CFPB and one that she is focusing on preventing consumer harm. “Purposeful enforcement is about utilizing robust resources most effectively to focus on the right cases, to reinforce clear rules of the road and to prevent harm by making sure that bad actors are held to account,” she explained. She added that she intends to “move as expeditiously as possible to resolve enforcement matters, whether through public action or a determination that a public investigation should close.”
