The CFPB has finalized its proposal allowing financial institutions to forgo mailing annual privacy notices by posting such notices online. Unfortunately, despite numerous pleas from the industry that the proposal would do little or nothing to ease the burden of annual privacy notices on most financial institutions, the CFPB issued the final rule with little or no substantive modification. Legislation currently pending in Congress would be far superior to the CFPB’s rule, and hopefully the considerable momentum that has built up behind those legislative proposals will not be derailed by the CFPB’s effort here.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), implemented by the CFPB’s Regulation P, requires financial institutions to provide an initial privacy notice to consumers when they establish the customer relationship with the individual, and to provide another copy of the privacy notice to customers each year.