This is the second in a series of articles on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's initiatives to enforce the ''abusive'' standard established by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
In the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress added a prohibition on ''abusive'' conduct to the long-established ban on unfair and deceptive acts and practices (UDAAP) in consumer financial transactions. In our first article, we articulated an approach to interpreting this new standard that is grounded in its text and legislative history, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray's testimony on the subject and kindred legal doctrines. This article reviews the Bureau's enforcement cases to see if the Bureau's use (or non-use) of the ''abusive'' standard provides further clarity. Director Cordray had suggested that the Bureau's early cases would be illuminating, explaining that ''abusive'' has a ''core'' and a ''gray area,'' and that ''there is enough misconduct that occurs in the core areas that we would be well-served to focus on that at the outset, in the first period of the Bureau.''1
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Originally published in Bloomberg BNA's Banking Report on February 3, 2015
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