Kathy Kraninger

Senate Democrats are warning the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be careful as it considers changes to its mortgage underwriting rules.

The Supreme Court may be closer to examining a key restraint on a president's ability to change CFPB leadership.

The bureau issued three policies removing the threat of legal liability for approved companies that test new products.

The event is the bureau's second in a series on consumer protection policy. The first dealt with the agency's authority to penalize firms for unfair, deceptive or abusive acts and practices.

Though advocates and industry are rarely aligned, they are starting to coalesce around a plan that would call for the elimination of the CFPB’s 43% debt-to-income limit as part of its qualified mortgage rule.

With the agency mulling changes to the “Qualified Mortgage” regulation, mortgage lenders say little-known standards for how they document a borrower’s income would be a good place to start.

Many in the industry say releasing GSE-backed loans from stringent underwriting rules has helped the housing market recover, but a new level of regulatory burden could reverse those gains.

The mortgage industry was caught off guard by regulators’ decision to cease special treatment for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in complying with underwriting rules. But how big of an impact will the new policy have?

The agency’s director said it will let a temporary GSE exemption from the “qualified mortgage” regulation expire.

The CFPB did not file any fair-lending enforcement actions in the 2018 fiscal year and did not refer any Equal Credit Opportunity Act violations to the Department of Justice.

In her first four and a half months, Kathy Kraninger met with lawmakers more than twice as often as her predecessor, but her schedule demonstrates willingness to meet with industry and policy stakeholders from various camps.

The agency announced the series in April as an effort to encourage public dialogue on policy issues.

The CFPB issued a final rule late Thursday to delay the compliance date for mandatory underwriting provisions of the 2017 payday lending rule.

The industry continues to push for an overhaul of the bureau’s leadership structure, but both parties seem uninterested.

The agency's spring rulemaking agenda includes the process for collecting small-business data as well as underwriting rules for GSE-backed loans. But what's missing from the list may be just as important.

Kathy Kraninger, the bureau's director, is in a standoff with Democrats about her claim that the agency cannot supervise institutions under the Military Lending Act.

All Democrats supported the bill focused on the decisions of former acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, while all Republicans opposed it.

Kristen Donoghue had been one of the agency's few remaining senior enforcement managers hired by former Director Richard Cordray.

The official told lawmakers Thursday that the research underlying the bureau's 2017 payday rule proposal did not support strict underwriting requirements of small-dollar loans.

Eric Blankenstein, the CFPB's policy director for supervision, enforcement and fair lending, has been criticized for using a racial slur in blog posts 15 years ago and claiming the majority of hate crimes were hoaxes.