Texas Bankers Association files FOIA request with CFPB

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The Texas Bankers Association (TBA) announced on its website that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request with the CFPB to obtain all documentation the CFPB requested from bank software processors on the overdraft activity of their bank customers.

The FOIA request relates to orders issued by the CFPB in November 2014 to financial services core processors that required the processors to provide information and data about the overdraft services they provide for depository institutions. In a June 2015 memo to state banking associations, the American Bankers Association raised concerns about the costs to industry of the CFPB’s use of its expansive authority to gather information under Section 1022 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The ABA stated in the memo that one of the processors had informed its clients that it may pass on to them the processor’s costs in responding to the CFPB’s order. While urging the state associations to encourage the CFPB to seek all relevant information before engaging in rulemaking (including with regard to the overdraft programs of community financial institutions), the ABA also suggested that the associations insist that the CFPB fund its own data collection efforts.

In its announcement, the TBA states that it was informed by its members that one of the processors would be billing its client banks for the cost of producing the information sought by the CFPB regarding overdraft checking programs. The TBA commented that it “objects to this third-party data search on both legal and customer privacy grounds” and is “concerned about the breadth of this data sweep and why the CFPB’s information requirements could not be satisfied with a representative cross-sampling rather than a demand request apparently sent to every major processor in the banking industry.”

According to the TBA, in addition to seeking “copies of all factual and analytical surveys and investigations conducted by the CFPB, or on its behalf by third parties,” its FOIA request also seeks “access to any legal analysis relied upon by way of supporting the CFPB’s legal authority for the issuance of the information orders.”

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