Personal Finance

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it will stop publishing consumer-written complaint narratives and visualizations in its public database, characterizing the practice as discretionary rather than legally required under 12 U.S.C. § 5493. The CFPB says historical narratives will move to its FOIA Reading Room, but as of this review no direct access path, search functionality, or confirmation that narrative text remains in bulk data downloads has been established. Consumers researching lenders lose the searchable firsthand accounts that have been publicly available since 2015; complaint filing, company response monitoring, and interagency data sharing continue unchanged.

New York City's DCWP moved the effective date for its SHIELD debt-collection rules from September 1, 2026, to January 1, 2027, confirmed by a July 22 City Record notice and an August 4 FAQ document. The rules introduce stricter contact limits of three communications per account per seven days across calls, texts, and email, expand consumer dispute rights beyond the federal 30-day written window, and ban medical debt reporting to consumer reporting agencies. A formal text amendment to update the September 1 date still in the original rule document has not yet been proposed.

The VA's new Partial Claim Program, authorized by law in July 2025 and launched June 15, 2026, lets mortgage servicers advance overdue amounts to bring delinquent VA loans current, capped at 25% of unpaid principal balance or 30% for borrowers who missed payments between March 2020 and May 2025. The deferred amount is not forgiven — it becomes a subordinate secured interest repaid when the loan is paid off, refinanced, or the property is sold. PennyMac is the only large servicer publicly confirmed as live as of mid-August; all servicers must implement the program by November 28, 2026, and borrowers can only access it through a servicer that has activated the workflow.