Better Markets and several other public advocacy groups submitted a comment letter opposing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposal to establish an advisory opinion program that would allow industry insiders special access to the bureau’s rulemaking process. 

The CFPB recently launched a pilot of the advisory opinion program that it says would publicly address regulatory uncertainty in the bureau’s existing regulations. However, seven organizations, including Better Markets, wrote that the program is fatally flawed and would allow industry insiders special access to the rulemaking process, allowing them to weaken consumer protections.

In the letter, the groups wrote that the CFPB must abandon the misguided pilot program and should take on the responsibility of developing its own regulatory agenda instead of adopting a one-size-fits-all approach of issuing one-off interpretive rules.

The organizations encouraged the bureau to continue soliciting public comment and actively engage with shareholders to find areas of its regulatory framework that need improvement. However, they stressed that the process must be fair, transparent and open to all Americans and not just to those with enough connections, legal expertise and funding to exploit a flawed advisory opinions program.

Read the comment letter or a brief summary.