CFPB Moves To Clean Up Credit Card Agreement Data

The CFPB has taken the next steps toward enhancing the credit card agreement submission process in terms of how companies submit with the bureau, the organization announced yesterday (April 15).

The CFPB issued its final ruling on the matter, which puts a temporary halt on the requirement that certain credit card issuers send their agreements to the bureau every quarter. Those records are typically published online in a public database. Instead, the CFPB will only look to collect agreement from the largest issuers to post online — at least for the temporary suspension period while the submission process gets cleaned up.

“Today we are finalizing a rule that will help further the Bureau’s work to improve the public credit card agreements database,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a news release. “Updating and streamlining the process for how credit card companies submit their agreements to us can benefit industry and our agency. Improving this process can also enable consumers and others to access the data faster and in a more useable form.”

The rule issued yesterday will enable the CFPB to develop what it called a more “streamlined and automated electronic submission system,” that will allow for users to navigate its system with greater ease than the current manual system allows for. The temporary suspension system ends April 30, 2016.

As explained by the CFPB, this regulation stems from a 2009 law passed by Congress called the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (CARD), that’s aimed at maintaining transparency between the bureau and credit card companies. The CFPB maintains a public database on its website of these credit card agreements from nearly 450 card issuers.

“The CFPB also intends for the new system to enable faster posting of new and revised agreements on the Bureau’s website. In designing the new system, the Bureau also intends to explore improved reporting formats for the posted information,” according to the news release on the ruling.

Card issuers are still required to post agreements on their own publicly available websites.