CBA Offers Comments on Remittance Assessment

May 23, 2017

On Tuesday, May 23, 2017, CBA and other trades submitted comment in response to the Bureau’s notice and Request for Information (RFI) regarding its planned assessment of regulations pertaining to consumer remittance transfers under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (subpart B of Regulation E).  CBA provided comments with respect to both the methodology of the Bureau’s Remittance Rule assessment plan, as described in the RFI; and provisions of the Rule CBA would encourage the Bureau to retain, eliminate, modify or clarify.  Regarding the assessment process, the letter encouraged the Bureau to consider developing a “Remittance Rule Impact Survey” to be used as an information gathering tool for the agency.  This survey could facilitate organized data collection, and better enable data comparison across remittance transfer providers.  CBA also suggest the Bureau incorporate a cost/benefit analysis, from both the sender and provider perspective, when comparing current remittance transfer transactions against a “baseline” transaction that would have occurred prior to adoption of the Remittance Rule.

 

With regard to specific Rule provisions, CBA offered the following recommendations:

 

  • Preserving the ability of depository institutions to provide estimates of third party fees and exchange rates (rather than actual fees and rates) in connection with remittance transfers to countries for which obtaining exact data is operationally not feasible;
  • Modifying the scope of the Rule by (i) excluding transfers in excess of a certain dollar amount, and (ii) excluding from coverage those transfers effectuated through reloadable prepaid cards;
  • Modifying disclosure requirements by (i) permitting senders more flexibility in selecting preferred delivery mechanisms, (ii) eliminating redundant disclosures to senders making concurrent, multiple transfers by phone, and (iii) simplifying the disclosures necessary for pre-scheduled transfers;
  • Modifying cancellation and resend rights by (i) eliminating the 30 minute cancellation window in lieu of a right to cancel prior to a provider’s execution of transfer; and (ii) limiting error resolution remedies to a refund (rather than a resend request) when the error results from sender error, involves an amount less than $15, or does not impact the amount of funds received by the designated recipient; and

Modifying the Rule’s error resolution provisions by holding the sender, and not the provider, responsible for transaction costs resulting from sender error.