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ARTICLE · 25 AUGUST 2017

CFPB's New Regulatory Inquiry Process: Ask And Ye Shall Receive?

Mayer Brown
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently announced a change in the way financial institutions, service providers, and others can obtain informal guidance on regulatory issues from the CFPB's staff.

United StatesConsumer Protection
Jonathan Jaffe
Jonathan Jaffe
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently announced a change in the way financial institutions, service providers, and others can obtain informal guidance on regulatory issues from the CFPB's staff. It appears that the only change is the access vehicle to use when posing questions.

In the past, the CFPB preferred that questions be posed via email to [email protected]. Now persons wanting answers to regulatory questions can use a new online form (https://reginquiries.consumerfinance.gov/). The new form provides a dropdown menu that allows the user to choose from the proverbial alphabet soup of regulations, along with an "Other" box. Users also can specify a particular statutory code section. However, the box provided for the user to pose the question has limited formatting options. As just one example, there is apparently no way to upload an attachment, which of course was an option when questions were sent via email. It remains to be seen whether the

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