CFPB is doing a good job overall -- government watchdog

A government watchdog agency says the CFPB is doing a good job overall. What do you think?

The CFPB is performing well, for the most part. That’s according to a new report by the Federal Reserve’s Office of the Inspector General.

The OIG had reviewed the CFPB’s rule-making process to see whether it complied with the Dodd-Frank Act. Overall, the CFPB was meeting requirements when it came to rule-making, the review concluded.

“Overall, we found that the CFPB complied with the provisions of section 1100G of the Dodd-Frank Act as well as the two interim policies and procedures issued by the CFPB’s Division of Research, Markets, and Regulations (RMR),” the OIG’s report stated. “We reviewed the 1100G rulemaking process for six proposed and final rules and determined that RMR conducted the required analyses on proposed and final rules.”

However, the review did conclude that the RMR had interim policies and procedures that had been in place for two years without being updated or finalized. The OIG also found that those interim policies afforded CFPB rule-makers too much latitude, “which contributed to a variance in documentation and inconsistent knowledge transfer practices.” The CFPB has since finalized the rules, however.

While the OIG gave the agency kudos for its rule-making procedures, the CFPB hardly has a spotless report card. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that the CFPB isn’t doing an adequate job of protecting the private financial information it’s collected on millions of consumers. According to the report, the agency doesn’t have written procedures or documentation for several processes, including data intake and security risk assessments. The agency also has yet to implement several privacy and security procedures, leaving consumer data potentially vulnerable, according to the report.

A CFPB spokesperson told MPA after the release of the GAO report that the agency was taking steps to improve its data protection.

What do you think? Is the CFPB doing a good job, or creating more problems than it solves? Sound off in the comments below.