Amendment Limiting CFPA Impact on Title Industry Introduced

October 21, 2009

Efforts by the American Land Title Association (ALTA) to limit the scope of the proposed Consumer Finance Protection Agency (CFPA) over the title insurance industry took a positive step Tuesday.

U.S. Reps. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) and Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) introduced an amendment to the bill that would remove the CFPA’s oversight of title insurance from several sections of the bill as the House Financial Services Committee held a markup of H.R. 3126, which would among other things; give the CFPA power to regulate the title insurance industry.

Kurt Pfotenhauer, CEO of ALTA, said title insurance providers will continue to be subject to existing federal consumer laws – primarily RESPA – as they are today. Authority to regulate title insurance under RESPA will be transferred from HUD to the CFPA. The only result of excluding title insurance from the CFPA definition of “financial activities” would be that it would not be subject to the new regulatory regimes intended to be applied to bank and non-bank financial institutions under Subtitle C of the bill.

“Without this amendment, the CFPA would have created a whole new regulatory ball game,” Pfotenhauer said. “We have been able to ensure what a CFPA may do tomorrow, would be no different than what HUD could do today.”

For more on the proposed CFPA, click here.


Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or communications@alta.org.