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NAFCU's Carrie Hunt, ahead of a House Financial Services Committee hearing today where CFPB Acting Director Mick Mulvaney will testify, offered ways to reduce the CFPB's regulatory burden on credit unions. Mulvaney is discussing the bureau's semi-annual report to Congress with the committee today.

Hunt, NAFCU's executive vice president of government affairs and general counsel, made the recommendations in a letter yesterday to House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, and Ranking Member Maxine Waters, D-Calif.

Hunt acknowledged the steps Mulvaney has taken to keep the bureau focused on its statutory objectives, but offered additional efforts credit unions would like to see the bureau pursue in order to reduce the regulatory burden, including:

• increasing its use of exemption authority;
• providing more guidance on unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices (UDAAP);
• revising the definition of a qualified mortgage;
• exempting more credit unions from the CFPB's mortgage servicing rule;
• verifying complaints made in the bureau's Consumer Complaint Database to prevent reputational harm;
• revising the remittance rule and expanding the threshold for the safe harbor from the "remittance transfer provider" definition; 
• reconsidering various reporting requirements of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act; and
• no longer pursuing overdraft regulations.

Hunt also encouraged committee members to support the Financial Product Safety Commission Act (H.R. 5266), which would reform the CFPB's governance structure from a single director to a bipartisan commission.

In the letter, Hunt wrote that NAFCU "was the only trade association to oppose the CFPB having authority over credit unions" when it was created because the association "was concerned about the possibility of overregulation of good actors such as credit unions."

"Unfortunately, many of our concerns about the increased regulatory burdens that credit unions would face under the CFPB have proven true over the last eight years," Hunt added.

The House Financial Services Committee hearing begins at 10 a.m. Eastern today; Mulvaney will also testify tomorrow before the Senate Banking Committee.