CFPB Withdraws Guidance Documents: A Shift Toward Regulatory Restraint

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is taking a red pen to its own playbook. In a sweeping move that signals a recalibration of its regulatory posture, the CFPB has announced the withdrawal of 67 guidance documents, including interpretive rules, policy statements, and advisory opinions. Effective as of May 12, 2025, the Federal Register notice reflects the Bureau’s effort to return to formal rulemaking processes and reduce reliance on sub-regulatory guidance that some may have viewed as functionally mandatory despite disclaimers to the contrary in order to avoid enforcement or reputation risk.

The decision marks an intentional reset. Current Bureau leadership—and many in the industry—viewed the guidance as overly prescriptive and inconsistent with the Bureau’s statutory limits. Even if the current Bureau does not actively act on this guidance, its mere presence in the regulatory ecosystem shaped business practices, risk modeling, and supervision strategies. The mass withdrawal reflects an effort to reaffirm the primacy of statute and regulation and avoid overlap with other agencies that may enforce consumer financial law. It is also lessening the possibility of field-level misapplication (in potential exams and investigations) and aligning the agency’s posture with recent shifts in its priorities and as judicial signals emphasizing procedural regularity over informal pronouncements.

The notice states that the “withdrawal is not necessarily final. The Bureau intends to continue reviewing all guidance documents to determine whether they should ultimately be retained.”

What's Being Withdrawn?

The list spans more than a decade of guidance and touches nearly every corner of consumer finance. It includes statements and interpretations relating to (see the notice, and below, for a complete list):

Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) responsibilities for furnishers and CRAs
Truth in Lending Act (TILA) disclosures
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) applicability
Marketing of credit-card add-on products and negative options
Authority under the Dodd-Frank Act’s UDAAP provision
Applicability of Consumer Financial Protection Act’s “Time or Space” Exception to Digital Marketers
Products such as earned wage access and buy now, pay later
Authority of states to enforce the Consumer Financial Protection Act

What Does This mean for Consumer Finance Companies?

First, this announcement potentially creates opportunities for companies that have built compliance programs and specific products around informal guidance. Those companies could now reevaluate whether their practices still align with the current legal framework, including expectations from state regulator and judicial decisions and self-regulation, and consider the potential for “revival” and future regulatory “snapbacks.”

Second, the CFPB’s move could invite more formal rulemaking. The move dismantles interpretive scaffolding that has informed the expectations of some regulators and the courts. In the future, staff permitting, the Bureau may feel compelled—or be compelled by stakeholders—to issue clearer regulations to reduce compliance burdens. Likewise, there’s now possibly more significant impact of judicial review under the newly Chevron-free administrative law regime.

Third, this shift further reflects the opinion of current CFPB leadership that the Bureau’s own policymaking should be constrained to formal channels and the statutes. Of note, the notice states, “even where the guidance might advance a permissible interpretation of the relevant statute or regulation, or afforded the public an opportunity to weigh in, it is the Bureau’s current policy to avoid issuing guidance except where necessary and where compliance burdens would be reduced rather than increased.”

Is All of the Withdrawn Guidance Irrelevant?

Companies should not assume that all of the withdrawn guidance has lost its relevance, even if it is not enforced by the Bureau. In some cases, these materials included restatements of statutory obligations or reflected consumer advocates’ expectations for industry conduct and their interpretations of federal consumer financial law. And, in some instances, the positions expressed—even when they are outside the scope of the statute or regulation that they are interpreting—may have been picked up by other regulators (including in state field exams), by plaintiffs, and by courts. As a practical matter, with respect to now-withdrawn guidance, it may be useful to document how policies now align with black-letter law rather than withdrawn interpretive commentary. Yet, federal and state enforcement activity, supervisory practices, and private lawsuits will continue to serve as ongoing sources of expectations and inputs for risk modeling.