The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) on Friday sent a letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Rohit Chopra, requesting that the bureau delay the compliance dates of a final rule requiring the registry of nonbank financial services providers.
The bureau initially announced the proposed rule in late 2022, which would require certain nonbank entities to report public agency enforcement actions and court orders for publication in a publicly available online nonbank registration system (NBR). The final rule was published in July 2024, with an implementation date of Sept. 16, 2024.
But “smaller nonbanks under CFPB supervision [are] required to register by April 14, 2025,” with “all other covered nonbanks to follow by July 14, 2025,” according to the MBA. In light of these impending dates, the MBA thinks that President Donald Trump’s recent executive order to freeze new government rules and regulations is applicable in this instance.
In addition to instructing federal agencies to avoid implementing any rules or regulations in process until new leaders appointed by Trump can review them, a provision of the executive order requests federal agencies to “consider postponing for 60 days from the date of this memorandum the effective date for any rules that have been published in the Federal Register, or any rules that have been issued in any manner but have not taken effect, for the purpose of reviewing any questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise.”
The MBA also said that the CFPB should “suspend any collection requirements for large participants that have not yet filed orders or have relevant orders issued during the freeze,” according to the letter. “Any data received from large participants should be held without further action, and the bureau should not take any additional steps on the publication of orders or creation of the registry.”
MBA president and CEO Bob Broeksmit said that the order “requires the review and eventual rescission of the CFPB’s costly and duplicative non-bank consent order registry.”
Broeksmit added that earlier comments submitted to the bureau while the rule was still in its “proposed” phase explained that state regulators found “this information is already publicly available and asked the CFPB not to proceed. The CFPB should not impose these burdensome costs on lenders and waste their resources to create a separate database.”
HousingWire reached out to a representative of the CFPB for a response. Receipt of an inquiry was acknowledged, but a full response was not immediately returned.
This letter from MBA arrives during a period of uncertainty for the bureau. As of Friday, Chopra was still on the job as CFPB director. But considering that he is an appointee of former President Joe Biden and heading an agency long targeted by Republicans, who now control Congress and the White House, his future at the bureau seems far from assured.
Reports have suggested that Trump’s team has had difficulty locating a candidate to replace Chopra, considering that the bureau’s power and regulatory activity is likely to be significantly curbed under the new administration.
