May 3: Recent CFPB Activities

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today released a report detailing the complex costs and fees that many consumers with health savings accounts are forced to pay. There were approximately 36 million health savings accounts in 2023 – holding more than $116 billion. These accounts provide tax benefits to help offset the costs of high deductible health plans. However, these benefits are being offset by charges like monthly maintenance fees, paper statement fees, outbound transfer fees, and account closure fees. Today’s report is part of the CFPB’s continuing efforts to reduce the risks and costs brought by financial institutions as they increase their presence in the American healthcare system. Read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new report that suggests consumers tend to pay more for products that have more complex pricing structures. The report is based on experiments with multiple rounds of buyers and sellers interacting in simple markets, and found that participants tended to pay more when prices were broken into sub-parts and were harder to understand. The research has implications for understanding how junk fees impede fair and competitive pricing in markets like auto loans or mortgages, where consumers have to evaluate extended warranties, add-ons, closing costs, and a wide variety of other fees instead of an all-inclusive price.

CFPB researchers had study participants act as buyers and sellers in a series of transactions. In some cases the objects for sale had a single all-in price, while in other cases the prices were split into 8 or 16 sub-prices. In the scenarios with more complex pricing, buyers tended to fare worse. The average selling prices rose, buyers had more difficulty comparing prices across sellers, and the overall amount paid rose. These findings contribute to a growing consensus of research and real-world observations showing that junk fees increase overall prices beyond what a fair and competitive market would allow. Read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today released research showing that 15 million Americans still have medical bills on their credit reports despite changes by Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The 15 million Americans disproportionately live in the South and low-income communities. Collectively, they have more than $49 billion in outstanding medical bills in collections. This is the CFPB’s second analysis of the changes made by the three national credit reporting companies to reduce the number of medical bills on credit reports. Today’s report follows the start of a CFPB rulemaking that will consider options to restrict the reporting of allegedly unpaid medical bills on credit reports. Read more