Raj Date says the CFPB is considering whether to impose rules on bank overdraft programs to ensure they’re being applied “in an even-handed way, according to Bloomberg. Date went on to say that U.S. regulators, including the Federal Reserve, have imposed rules on overdraft programs, and that may lead to inconsistent supervision of different kinds of financial institutions.

“We will be monitoring the impact of the recent regulatory and supervisory interventions,” he said during a Philadelphia speech today. “If we find that these interventions are not working as intended, we will adjust. And if we find that additional action is needed, we will act.”

It appears that the CFPB’s new credit card complaint system is experiencing hiccups in routing some complaints to banks, according to Bloomberg.

The month-old complaint response system has failed to properly route all inquiries, a problem bureau spokeswoman Jen Howard said the agency will resolve “within a matter of weeks.” Howard didn’t say how many complaints have been held up.

Continued coverage from Bloomberg’s story:

Some banks found that their volume of complaints dropped as the bureau’s system failed to work properly, said Richard Hunt, head of the Consumer Bankers Association. The banks were concerned they might be blamed for unanswered queries, he said.

“If you’re a bank, you don’t know there has been a complaint unless the CFPB tells you,” Hunt said in an interview.

Could Obama miss seeing a CFPB director appointment during his first-term in office? Some think that the Cordray confirmation could be drawn out for weeks, if not months.

“This situation will continue until 2013,” said Mark Calabria, a former Republican staffer on the Senate Banking Committee who is now director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. “Republicans are unlikely to support anyone until all three of their changes are made. Just keeping the agency around is viewed as a major compromise.”

Calabria is referring to the structural changes that GOP leaders are calling for before they confirm anyone to lead the new consumer agency.

Interesting commentary from HuffPo on the Bloomberg Businessweek cover story re: Elizabeth Warren.

I’m going to generously assume that the weird, critical, slam-book-style bubbles that dot the cover of the July 11-17 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, touting an Elizabeth Warren cover story, are simply an interpretaive way of sending up Warren’s myopic critics, and not the magazine itself commenting on a woman whose most fervent desire is for ordinary Americans to have intelligible loan and credit-card agreements.

All the same, seeing Warren’s picture dotted with epithets like “smug” and “entitled” and “know-it-all” causes a tiny secretion of bile to churn in my bowels. Ask a woman what the barb “know-it-all” means to her, and I’m guessing you’ll hear back something like, “It means I kept using my brain even after no one wanted to fuck me anymore” — to bastardize a line from Tina Fey.

Elizabeth Warren’s life story has been laid out by Bloomberg Businessweek today and will be featured as the cover story, with the title: “She’s With the Government, and Here to Help.”

One interesting tidbit from the story:

One other person she has not yet won over: Barack Obama. The President has not nominated her to head the bureau. Instead, last fall he gave her the title of special assistant to the president and special adviser to the Treasury and tasked her with getting the place up and running. For now, she is the non-head of a non-agency.

Not sure that’s entirely true. Don’t think President Obama would’ve put Warren in charge of getting things up and running if she hadn’t already won him over. And in any case, Obama definitely won Warren over–as the Pundit reported in May.

The CFPB has focused its attention on the supervision of nonbank financial institutions.

“Consumers deserve the peace of mind that financial companies — both banks and nonbanks — are following the rules,” said Elizabeth Warren, Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the CFPB. “The CFPB will be able to examine companies that have never been subject to federal oversight to ensure that no one is gaining an unfair advantage by breaking the law.  This will ultimately create fair competition, better product offerings, and more transparent markets for consumers.”

Six consumer credit markets is where the CFPB will consider supervision, leading to onsite examinations and registration requirements:

1. Debt Collection
2. Consumer Reporting
3. Consumer Credit and Related Activities
4. Money Transmitting, Check Cashing, and Related Activities
5. Prepaid Cards
6. Debt Relief Services

The public may comment on the rule for 45 days once it has been published in the Federal Register.

The CFPB seeks public comment on the following:

• What consumer financial product or service markets should be included in the initial rule?
• How should the financial product or service markets included in the initial rule be defined? In addition to considerations relating to how to define the relevant product markets, should all markets be national in scope, or should the CFPB consider regional or other geographic markets in certain instances? If regional or other geographic markets should be considered, describe with specificity how they could be defined.
• What specific criteria should be measured, and threshold levels set, to define a larger participant in the markets identified above, and in any other markets that should be included in an initial rule? What data should be used to assess whether the thresholds have been met?

US Bancorp’s chairman and CEO says banks shouldn’t “overreact” to the creation of the CFPB, or worry about its effect on business.

“It is just simply timely and topical because it’s new and we haven’t had it before,” Richard K. Davis said yesterday at a conference of the Consumer Bankers Association in Orlando, Florida. “But don’t think it’s going to be that harmful.”

He also went on to say re: the CFPB director nomination:

“I think we probably ought to embrace it and move forward and work with whomever is in that position.”

Elizabeth Warren is so last week. According to recent reports, the question on who will become the first agency head for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has shifted to Raj Date.

Date, a former Wall Street executive who has worked at Deutsche Bank Securities and Capital One Financial Corp., is Warren’s top aide and a chief proponent of the agency’s creation.

Date, 40, earned an engineering degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a law degree from Harvard University. He was senior vice president for corporate strategy and development at Capital One and a managing director in the financial institutions group at Deutsche Bank. During the debate over Dodd-Frank, Date headed the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, a research group he founded.

He has served since February as the bureau’s associate director for research, markets and regulation.

Bloomberg View columnists William Cohan and Jonathan Alter debate over whether Obama administration adviser Elizabeth Warren should to named to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They speak on Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness with Margaret Brennan.” (William Cohan and Jonathan Alter are Bloomberg View columnists. The opinions expressed are their own. Source: Bloomberg)

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