The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today rescinded a January 2020 policy statement that clarified the bureau’s approach to citing and challenging “abusive” conduct in supervision or enforcement actions.
In the now-rescinded statement, the CFPB had said that it would consider whether the harm to consumers outweighs the benefit to consumers, and that it would generally avoid “dual pleading” both abusiveness and unfairness or deception violations that stem from the same or nearly all of the same facts. In addition, the CFPB had said it would generally not seek monetary relief for abusive violations in instances where there is a good-faith effort to comply with the abusiveness standard, except to address consumer injuries caused by the conduct.
Going forward, the CFPB said it “intends to exercise its supervisory and enforcement authority consistent with the full scope of its statutory authority under the Dodd-Frank Act as established by Congress.”