CFPB Director Rohit Chopra today said he is concerned about the potential regulatory burden that rules like the bureau’s pending Section 1071 rulemaking—which addresses the collection of credit application data for small businesses, including women-owned and minority-owned small businesses—could have on small banks, noting that “I’m very sensitive to what our local financial institutions are facing.”
Chopra acknowledged that “a lot of rulemaking that occurs in Washington [is] extremely complicated” and expressed his desire to move toward “simple, bright-line rules” that are “easy to follow [and] easy to enforce.” He encouraged banks to submit comments on the cost of the proposed 1071 data collection, adding that “I want to understand what costs are involved when it comes to reporting.”
In both written and oral testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today, Chopra emphasized the importance of what he called “relationship banking,” noting that “we want to make sure we’re attuned to making relationship banking and local banking successful, rather than have them all merge and consolidate.”
