Consumer Financial Protection Reform

Full Title:
Consumer Financial Protection Accountability and Reform Act of 2026

Summary#

This bill would change many parts of how the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB) works and how consumer finance rules are made and enforced. Key actions in the bill include: bringing the CFPB into the regular appropriations process; changing how civil penalty funds are treated; requiring detailed cost-benefit and transparency steps for rulemakings; strengthening small business regulatory reviews; creating OMB-led periodic retrospective reviews of rules; requiring a separate Inspector General for the CFPB; requiring the CFPB to define "abusive" acts and limiting when it can use that authority; defining "substantial injury"; restoring certain court oversight about attorney litigation activities; limiting CFPB authority over entities regulated by State insurance regulators; creating a safe harbor and product rules for small-dollar credit; requiring clarity statements on agency guidance; ordering a GAO study on buy now pay later services; setting rules for earned wage access providers; raising and indexing asset size thresholds for CFPB supervision; allowing certain supervised institutions to elect alternative supervision; increasing interagency coordination and prior notice for enforcement against depositories; limiting some market monitoring uses; changing civil money penalty structure and adding a penalty matrix; adding new complaint verification and confidentiality rules; and requiring rulemaking or reports in several areas.

What it means for you#

  • For consumers: the bill would require clearer definitions and procedures for enforcement and for some consumer-facing products. It adds specific rules for earned wage access services and a safe-harbor framework for some small-dollar credit products. It would change how consumer complaints are collected and stored and require consumer attestation for complaints.
  • For banks, credit unions, and nonbank firms: the bill raises supervision thresholds, adds options to choose supervisory regimes for some institutions, increases required interagency consultation before rulemaking and enforcement, and limits certain CFPB supervisory and market-monitoring uses. It also changes civil penalty limits and requires a penalty matrix.
  • For small businesses and providers: the bill requires the CFPB to analyze impacts on small entities in rulemaking, enhance privacy rules for small business loan data, and adds notice and comment steps for data changes.

Expenses#

No publicly available information on the bill's net costs or savings to the federal government is included in the text. The bill directs agencies to conduct studies and rulemakings (for example, a GAO study and multiple CFPB rulemakings) and requires new reporting and OMB review steps, which would involve administrative work by federal agencies, but the bill text does not provide cost estimates.

Proponents' View#

No publicly available information.

Opponents' View#

No publicly available information.