January 26, 2021

The Tide is Turning: Respond to CFPB Changes with Your Customers Top-of-Mind

Keith Hauser

Early last week, it was announced that President Joe Biden is planning to nominate Rohit Chopra, former student loan ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to lead the consumer finance agency.

Rohit helped Senator Elizabeth Warren establish the CFPB before joining it in 2011 to spearhead efforts exposing abuses in the student lending market. Following this, he worked with President Barack Obama’s Student Aid Bill of Rights, which provided borrowers more power with loan servicers. 

President Biden knows a thing or two about the CFPB. After all, he was Vice President when it was created during the Obama Administration’s first term. 

All of this to say: the financial services industry is going to experience a 180. Gone are the years of deregulation and light to little enforcement. We’re anticipating an aggressive overhaul and reinstatement of restrictions and regulations. Especially given the current challenges of COVID-19.

What is Banking's #1 priority?

CFPB and Customer Experience in Banking

Banking is all about providing great services and experiences to consumers. Which, inevitably, leads to better products, more customers, and improved bottom-line results for shareholders.

After 20+ years of managing operations and compliance teams at banks and mortgage companies, I understand how compliance can inundate executives and leaders. Rather than working on projects to improve your customers’ experience, you’re spending hours upon hours understanding regulatory impacts on operations or responding to reviews and audits.

What do these changes mean for me as a leader?

We’re in a new year and under a new administration. The tide is turning, and the light grip that the Trump administration had on the CFPB is going to be replaced by a firm grasp. If you haven’t started preparing for the sweeping changes ahead — it’s time. 

My advice? Embrace both sides. Focus on customer experience while managing the compliance process. How? Here are three recommendations to get started today. 

How to embrace customer experience and compliance:

  1. View your audits and new regulatory requirements in a different light. How can we execute these changes by proactively improving the customer experience instead of just fulfilling the requirement?  
  2. Complete an assessment of your organization from a customer’s perspective. What are the root causes of your customer complaints? What issues recur most often? What could you change in order to prevent issues before they occur? 
  3. Prioritize projects based on potential customer impact. Often, customer experience improvements are directly tied to findings from the CFPB or other regulatory/audit groups. 

These questions might seem basic, but I challenge you and your teams to dig deep into the fundamentals. You will likely uncover many truths you haven’t noticed in a while or even thought of. 

And, thankfully, you don’t have to go through this process alone. We’ve partnered with many organizations to address these challenges. The return on investment is large and quick as companies have experienced a reduction in complaints and improved customer service. Less customer attrition, less cost in tracking and managing complaints, and less time spent on compliance remediation down the road is a win-win for everyone. 

If you're contemplating how this affects your business, you're not alone. Leave a comment or contact me to learn about the companies we’ve helped simultaneously improve customer experience while meeting compliance requirements. 

Contributors

Keith Hauser

Account Director
Alumni
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