The CFPB has issued its Fall 2019 Semi-Annual Report to Congress covering the period April 1, 2019 through September 30, 2019.

The report represents the CFPB’s third semi-annual report under Director Kraninger’s leadership and continues the practice of the prior two reports of not providing aggregate numbers for how much consumers obtained in consumer relief and how much was assessed in civil money penalties in supervisory and enforcement actions during the period covered by the report.

The new report indicates that the Bureau had 1,430 employees as of September 30, 2019, representing a decrease of 22 employees from the number of employees as of September 30, 2018 (which was 1,452 employees).  As compared with the number of employees as of September 30, 2017 (which was 1,645 employees), the number of employees as of September 30, 2019 represents a reduction of 215 employees (13 percent decrease) over the two-year period.

In addition to discussing ongoing or past developments that we have covered in previous blog posts, the report includes the following noteworthy information:

• The Bureau’s Fair Lending Supervision program initiated 16 supervisory events during the period covered by the report, 6 more than the number of such events initiated during the period covered by the prior semi-annual report.  As compared with that period, it also issued more matters requiring attention or memoranda of understanding.  In addition, the Bureau provided supervisory recommendations “relating to supervisory concerns related to weak or nonexistent fair lending policies and procedures, risk assessments, fair lending testing, and/or fair lending training.”
• During the period covered by the report, the Bureau filed one fair lending public enforcement action and referred one ECOA matter to the DOJ.  (In the prior annual report, the CFPB indicated that it did not initiate any fair lending public enforcement actions and did not refer any ECOA matters to the DOJ.)

The report provides no new information about the timing of a final debt collection rule or a final rule that removes the ability-to-repay provisions of the CFPB’s final payday loan rule.  With regard to the payday loan rule, the report lists the rule as a final rule “for the upcoming period as reflected in the Bureau’s Fall 2019 Unified Agenda.”  In the agenda, the Bureau estimated that it would issue a final rule in April 2020.

Director Kraninger is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee regarding the new semi-annual report.  We assume the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on the semi-annual report at a later date.