American Banker: CFPB's Mulvaney strips his fair-lending office of enforcement powers

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney has stripped the agency's fair-lending office of enforcement powers in a sign that many consumer advocates see as trying to reduce oversight and penalties for firms that discriminate against borrowers.

The move appeared to be a demotion for the fair-lending division, which was previously an equal division alongside supervision and enforcement, and which is now part of the office that handles internal agency concerns about employees.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., saw it as one more sign that Mulvaney was attempting to gut the agency. She noted that the fair-lending office will now technically be under the "director's office," along with Office of Equal Opportunity and Fairness, giving Mulvaney greater control.

"Mulvaney is putting the Office of Fair Lending under his control so that he can weaken it - leaving neighborhoods and consumers across the country more vulnerable to bias," Warren said in an emailed statement. "For years, Mick Mulvaney opposed CFPB's efforts to fight discrimination in the consumer financial marketplace even as the agency returned $400 million from discriminatory financial institutions to American families who had been overcharged or denied credit."

Read the full article on the American Banker website here.

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