Taking its inspiration from Elvis Costello’s song lyrics, “peace, love and understanding” is how the FTC describes its “cooperative relationship” with the CFPB in a blog post about the reauthorization of the Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) entered into by the two agencies on January 20, 2012.

The MOU had an initial term of three years, and when it was signed, Chris Willis wrote about the MOU’s implications for nonbank entities.  Among the topics it addressed were enforcement, rulemaking and guidelines, supervision and examination (including, most notably, the sharing of examination reports and confidential supervisory information), consumer complaints, and information sharing and confidentiality.

The new MOU, which also has a three-year term, makes what the FTC describes as “a few small administrative tweaks” to the initial MOU.  The reauthorization of the MOU is not surprising since, as the FTC writes in its blog post, the two agencies are “in harmony” about consumer protection.