On March 12, 2012, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB) announced proposed amendments to the confidential treatment of information obtained from persons in connection with its exercise of authorities under Federal consumer financial law.
The proposed amendments will add a new section to the rules which provide that the submission by any person of any information to the Bureau in the course of the Bureau's supervisory or regulatory processes will not waive or otherwise affect any privilege such person may claim with respect to such information under federal or state law as to any other person or entity.
Additionally, the CFPB is proposing to adopt a provision which provides that privileged information given by the CFPB to another federal or state agency does not waive any applicable privilege, whether the privilege belongs to the CFPB or any other person.
The Dodd-Frank Act (Dodd-Frank) did not explicitly address whether the submission of privileged information to the CFPB in the course of the its supervisory or regulatory processes will affect any privilege a supervised entity may claim with respect to such information, even though Congress did provide that "all the powers and duties" of the prudential regulators relating to their transferred consumer financial protection functions would be granted to the CFPB, and this grant of authority encompasses the ability to receive privileged information from supervised entities without effecting a waiver.
In this newsletter, I will offer a brief understanding of this complex issue and provide an Action Plan.*
IN THIS ARTICLE
History
Bulletin 12-01
Proposed Rule
Confidentiality
Considerations
Action Plan
Bulletin 12-01
Proposed Rule
Confidentiality
Considerations
Action Plan
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History
The CFPB first announced in October 2010 that it would be gathering information from banks and nonbanks in its efforts to examine and supervise financial service products.
Many financial institutions at the time expressed considerable concern that divulging privileged documents to the CFPB would be deemed a waiver by the courts, thereby permitting competitors and consumer groups to access the privileged documents.
The CFPB's first official release of the year, Bulletin 12-01, addressed the treatment and scope of confidentiality protections accorded information collected from supervised institutions through the CFPB's supervisory process.
Then, as indicated above, on March 12, 2012, the CFPB proposed the new rule, the purpose of which, among other things, is to codify protections for privileged information submitted by financial institutions that are regulated by the CFPB.
Bulletin 12-01
The CFPB asserts that "Congress intended the Bureau's examination authority to be equivalent to that of the prudential regulators," with respect to the statutory provision that grants prudential regulators the authority to receive privileged information from their supervised entities without there being a waiver of privilege.
The CFPB reached this conclusion by claiming that in inheriting the prudential regulators' examination authority with respect to compliance with federal consumer financial laws for supervised institutions, it was concomitantly granted "all powers and duties" vested in the prudential regulators related to examination authority.
And one of the powers is the ability and authority to receive privileged information without affecting a waiver. However, it should be noted here that the statutes cited by the CFPB in support of its claim applies to federal banking agencies, not the CFPB. Thus, it seems that the CFPB is not entirely in a position to use, mutatis mutandis, the same statutory privilege protection provided for in Dodd-Frank.
Bulletin 12-01 (Bulletin) addressed two specific parts of the CFPB's policy on confidential information.
1) It states that institutions providing privileged information to the CFPB pursuant to a supervisory request will not waive any privilege that attaches to such information.
2) It indicates that the CFPB will treat information obtained through the supervisory process as confidential and privileged, and, importantly, it provides that the CFPB will only disclose such information to prudential and state regulators, when necessary and/or appropriate, and to law enforcement agencies, only where justified, as determined by the CFPB.
The Bulletin seeks to resolve an intrinsic issue regarding the CFPB's lack of a statutory examination privilege such as that provided to the federal banking agencies. Although the Bulletin provides possible legal support for why similar privilege applies to supervisory information provided to the CFPB, the outline itself does recognize the absence of the same statutory protection that the federal banking agencies had been compelled to pursue in the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006 ("FSRRA"), specifically Section 607.
Section 607 of FSRRA was important to the federal banking agencies because several courts had diminished the existing common law examination privilege. Broadly speaking, this section was adopted in order to have statutory protection that could not be challenged.
In my view, the legislative history involved in drafting Section 607 of the FSRRA suggests that the supervised institutions which disclose privileged information to the CFPB should be mindful of the issues and potential risks in doing so, given the CFPB's assertion that it has the same authority and legal protections in place as the federal banking agencies to receive privileged information without effecting a waiver of the privilege.
