Recently, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published for comment on its website its draft Strategic Plan for 2013 - 2018 (Plan).
According to the CFPB, the plan includes the following four goals:
(1) Prevent financial harm to consumers while promoting good practices that benefit them.
(2) Empower consumers to live better financial lives.
(3) Inform the public, policymakers, and the CFPB’s own policymaking with data-driven analysis of consumer finance markets and consumer behavior.
(4) Advance the CFPB’s performance by maximizing resource productivity and enhancing impact. For each goal, the plan identifies outcomes to be achieved and how progress will be measured.
Submit comments to StrategyPlanComments@cfpb.gov before October 25, 2012.
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IN THIS ARTICLE
Goals, Strategies, and Metrics
Goal 1: Prevent Financial Harm to Consumers
Goal 2: Empower Consumers to Live Better Financial Lives
Goal 3: Inform The Public
Chart: Data Sources and Data Outputs
Goal 4: Maximizing Resources and Impact
Library
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Goals, Strategies, and Metrics
The Plan outlines these goals, strategies, and metrics:
- Strategic goals that outline what the CFPB aims to achieve.
- Desired outcomes in support of its goals.
- Strategies that state the actions the CFPB will take to accomplish our outcomes.
- Performance measures that CFPB will track against specific targets in order to assess its progress toward achieving its outcomes.
- Indicators that the CFPB will track and use to assess progress toward achieving our outcomes. (Unlike performance measures, indicators do not reflect targets.)
Goal 1
Prevent Financial Harm to Consumers while Promoting Good Practices
The CFPB stated that, prior to Congress enacting the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA) as Title X of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Public Law 111-203, dated July 21, 2010), consumer financial protection had not been the primary focus of any one Federal agency, and no agency had effective tools to set the rules for and oversee the whole market.
Per the CFPB, the result was a system without sufficiently effective rules or consistent enforcement of the law. The CFPB believes that the consequences can be seen both in the 2008 financial crisis and in its aftermath.
The CFPB increased accountability in government by consolidating consumer financial protection authorities that had existed across seven different federal agencies into one, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In addition to establishing the CFPB's enforcement powers, the CFPA gives the CFPB the authority to supervise and examine many financial institutions that were not previously subject to Federal oversight, such as nonbank mortgage companies, payday lenders, and private education lenders.
With the consolidation of existing and new federal authorities under one roof, the CFPB seeks to be properly focused and equipped to prevent financial harm to consumers while promoting practices that benefit consumers across financial institutions.
Goal 2
Empower Consumers to Live Better Financial Lives
This second goal of the CFPB is "to arm consumers with the knowledge, tools, and capabilities they need in order to make better informed financial decisions by engaging them in the right moments of their financial lives, in moments when the consumer is most receptive to seeking out and acting on assistance."
The CFPB plans to develop and maintain a variety of tools, programs, and initiatives that provide targeted, meaningful, and accessible assistance and information to consumers at the moment they need it.
To reify this goal, the CFPB has predicated two outcomes.
Outcome # 1:
The first outcome will collect, monitor, respond to, and share data associated with consumer complaints and inquiries about consumer financial products or services.
The CFPB has asserted that the consumer response function is central to its mission. The CFPB would provide direct assistance to consumers, in real-time, through its Consumer Response team. (See our October 4, 2012 article on Consumer Complaints and the Consumer Response team.) This team hears directly from consumers about the challenges they face in the marketplace and brings their concerns to the attention of the financial institutions that the CFPB regulates for investigation and resolution.
The Consumer Response team is tasked also to learn from the experiences of already operating complaint centers, for instance, by using the historical data from the FTC's Consumer Sentinel network, which is a collection of consumer complaint data from a variety of contributors, to inform its approach to handling complaints.
Performance metrics are applied by deriving data from complaint volume, the percentage of complaints routed through the dedicated company portal, and the complaint cycle time (i.e., intake cycle time, from receipt to company referral; company cycle time, from referral to company response; consumer cycle time, from company closure response to dispute; investigations cycle time, from investigations queue to closure).
Outcome # 2:
The second outcome helps consumers understand the costs, risks, and tradeoffs of financial decisions; build trusted relationships that are interactive and informative to help consumers take control of their financial choices to meet their own goals; and raise effectiveness of those who provide financial education services to increase financial literacy.
