Two significant reports have landed that are already generating conversation across the ARM industry — and both are being misread in ways that could leave collection agencies and creditors’ rights law firms seriously exposed.
The first: a Government Accountability Office report confirming that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sharply reduced enforcement, supervision, staffing, and rulemaking activity. The CFPB declined to cooperate with the review, forcing the GAO to rely largely on public records and court filings to complete its assessment.
The second: a White House Council of Economic Advisers analysis estimating that CFPB regulations have cost American consumers between $237 billion and $369 billion since 2011 — mostly through higher borrowing costs on mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. The report is already being used by Republican lawmakers to push for further reform of the bureau’s authority.
Both reports are real. Both are significant. And both are being used to tell a story that, for collection agencies and creditors’ rights law firms, is dangerously incomplete.
The story being told: The CFPB is pulling back, so compliance pressure is easing. The story that’s actually true: The CFPB is pulling back, so your private litigation exposure just got worse.
What the GAO Actually Found
The GAO’s report is detailed — and damning, not of the industry, but of the bureau’s capacity. The watchdog found that the CFPB has issued stop work orders, closed supervisory exams, terminated enforcement cases, and pursued workforce reductions affecting the vast majority of staff. Dozens of guidance documents and rules have been rescinded or withdrawn.
What this means practically for ARM firms is real near-term relief on a specific dimension: fewer federal supervisory exams, fewer CFPB-initiated enforcement actions, and a slower pipeline of new rulemaking. If your compliance anxiety has historically been driven by fear of a CFPB investigation, that pressure is meaningfully lower today than it was two years ago.
But here’s what the GAO report does not change: every rule currently on the books — Regulation F, the FDCPA, the FCRA, the TCPA — remains fully in effect. Existing consent orders still apply. And the litigation that private plaintiffs’ attorneys can bring under those laws is completely independent of what the CFPB chooses to do.
The $369 Billion Number and What It Actually Means for You
The White House report draws on a Council of Economic Advisers analysis breaking down the cost of CFPB-related regulation by product: mortgages accounted for $116–$183 billion in higher consumer costs; auto loans added $32–$51 billion; and credit cards contributed another $74–$116 billion. Those figures have fueled fresh calls to reform or restructure the bureau’s authority.
For collection agencies and law firms, the political fight around these numbers is largely a sideshow. What matters is this: even if the CFPB’s role narrows further, the private right of action under the FDCPA does not disappear. Consumers — or more accurately, plaintiffs’ attorneys working on their behalf — can still sue for FDCPA violations without any involvement from a federal regulator.
The CFPB was always just one enforcement vector. Private litigation is the other. And that one is accelerating, not retreating.
The Class Action That Dropped the Same Week
If you need evidence that private FDCPA enforcement is alive and active independent of CFPB activity, consider what also came out this week in the Eastern District of Michigan.
Judge F. Kay Behm certified a class action in Nelson v. I.Q. Data International, a case where the collector had been adding 5% annual interest to collection letters — regardless of whether the underlying lease agreement authorized it. The complaint alleged that presenting this interest as owed misrepresented the character and amount of the debt, in violation of the FDCPA.
The class was certified because the challenged language appeared in standardized form letters sent to thousands of Michigan consumers. The court previously rejected the argument that Michigan law automatically permits collectors to impose interest where a contract is silent, noting that the relevant consumer protection statute is not a blank authorization to add interest absent a contractual basis.
This case is a perfect illustration of how class action risk works in 2026: a single compliance decision, baked into a letter template, multiplies across an entire portfolio and becomes a classwide claim.
The Three Enforcement Vectors That Aren’t Going Away
ARM professionals who interpret the CFPB pullback as a general compliance reprieve are conflating federal regulatory oversight with the full landscape of compliance risk. There are at least three enforcement mechanisms that are entirely unaffected by the CFPB’s downsizing:
Private FDCPA litigation. Consumers and their attorneys can sue under the FDCPA without any federal agency involvement. Class action filings have been increasing, not decreasing. One class certification — as in the Michigan case this week — can transform a routine compliance error into an existential risk.
State regulators. As federal oversight contracts, state regulators are actively moving to fill the void. Maryland lawmakers introduced an ID theft and coerced debt bill this month. California, Colorado, and New York have each added debt collection legislation in recent cycles. Multi-state agencies now face an increasingly fragmented and complex compliance landscape.
Client and creditor contract requirements. Creditors’ rights law firms and collection agencies are often contractually required to maintain certain compliance standards by the creditors who place accounts with them. A reduced CFPB profile does not change what your clients require of you.
The Agencies Most at Risk Right Now
The agencies most likely to get hurt in this environment aren’t the ones that have been non-compliant under CFPB scrutiny. They’re the ones that built their compliance practices around fear of CFPB exams — and are now quietly reducing compliance investment because it feels like the heat is off.
When compliance is driven by the presence of a regulator rather than by systematic internal controls, removing the regulator creates a vacuum. And that vacuum is exactly where plaintiffs’ attorneys go looking.
The agencies best positioned in this environment are the ones that treat compliance not as a regulatory response, but as an operational standard — one that’s enforced automatically, consistently, and documentably regardless of who is or isn’t watching.
What to Do Right Now: A 5-Point Checklist
✔ Audit your collection letter templates immediately. The Michigan class certification underscores that interest and fee language is a live class action risk. Review every template for unauthorized charges, incorrect validation notices, and any language that could misrepresent the character or amount of the debt.
✔ Map your multi-state compliance exposure. With state-level legislation accelerating — Maryland this week, others coming — agencies collecting across multiple jurisdictions need jurisdiction-specific rules for disclosures, timing, and communication channel permissions. Manual processes will not scale to this environment.
✔ Verify your Regulation F and FDCPA automation is fully operational. Payment reminder timing, mini-Miranda disclosures, opt-out management, and Reg E consent flows should all be automated and logged — not dependent on individual agents applying them correctly. Your audit trail is your litigation defense.
✔ Monitor the CFPB’s consent order status. The bureau has moved to vacate or terminate some existing consent orders. If your firm has operated under or adjacent to existing orders, verify which are still in effect and what obligations persist.
✔ Prepare for policy whiplash. The GAO noted that future leadership changes could swing CFPB priorities again. The agencies that will navigate this most smoothly are those whose compliance infrastructure doesn’t depend on predicting regulatory direction — it simply executes correctly regardless.
The Bottom Line
Less CFPB enforcement does not mean less compliance risk. It means different compliance risk — distributed across more state regulators, more private plaintiffs’ attorneys, and an increasingly complex multi-jurisdiction landscape.
For collection agencies and creditors’ rights law firms, the answer to that complexity is the same in 2026 as it was in 2020: systematic, automated, documentable compliance that doesn’t rely on any individual knowing the rules on a given day.
The CFPB may be quieter. The plaintiff bar is not. The states are not. Your clients are not.
Compliance automation isn’t just a nice-to-have in this environment. It’s the one investment that protects you regardless of which enforcement vector comes next.
Want to see how HealPay automates your compliance workflow?
HealPay’s Treatments feature applies FDCPA, Reg F, and Reg E compliance rules across every consumer interaction — automatically, consistently, and with a full audit trail. No manual checklists. No agent-dependent execution. Just compliance that works regardless of who’s watching.
