Semi-Annual Report Fall 2024
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is pleased to present our Semi-Annual Report to Congress for the period beginning April 1, 2024 and ending September 30, 2024, except where otherwise noted. This report also provides the information required by The Truth in Lending Act, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, and the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act for the period January 1, 2023–December 31, 2023, as well as the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act for 2024.
Message from Acting Director
This Report represents the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the leadership of the former Director Chopra. As indicated throughout the Report, under his leadership, the Bureau regularly engaged in an overreach of its statutory mandates via punishment of disfavored industries. This overreach and weaponization of the government manifested especially clearly in burdensome regulations and guidance and in investigations and cases that the Bureau initiated.
Among the most shameful examples was a lawsuit against Townstone, a nonbank retail-mortgage creditor and broker based in Chicago, Illinois. Under the guise of enforcement of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, the Bureau targeted Townstone based on an alleged shortfall of the number of applicants from minority areas as compared to other mortgage companies in Chicago. This was a purely statistical difference and based on an arbitrary scale CFPB devised and which it impermissibly equated to discrimination. The Bureau continued the prosecution of that business because the owner of Townstone made comments during his radio program about crime in Chicago that the Bureau lawyers found offensive. Under my leadership, we sought to expose these abuses and the Bureau’s trampling on Americans’ First Amendment rights.
Another example of the Bureau’s weaponization against a disfavored industry was a politically motivated investigation into Credova Financial, LLC. Credova’s use of innovative financial technology solutions to provide consumer financing to facilitate the exercise of Americans’ Second Amendment rights made it a target for the Bureau. It was also one of numerous regulation-by-enforcement actions for which the CFPB under former Director Chopra became infamous. Under my leadership, that investigation was closed. These are egregious examples of companies being targeted for engaging in protected political speech and exercising their constitutional rights.
Under my leadership, the focus of the Bureau is on pressing threats to consumers, particularly those impacting servicemembers and their families, and veterans. The Bureau dedicates its resources to addressing actual fraud, where there are identifiable victims with material and measurable damages, rather than to matters based on the Bureau’s perception that consumers made “wrong” choices. The Bureau under my leadership seeks to redress tangible harm by getting money back directly to consumers, rather than imposing penalties on companies to simply fill the Bureau’s penalty fund.
In accordance with these priorities and to remedy the prior leadership’s overreach, the Bureau has undertaken multiple remedial actions, such as withdrawing inappropriate regulations and guidance documents, terminating certain consent orders, and withdrawing or dismissing cases that never should have been brought.