The US Federal Agency responsible for regulating consumer protection is to make further adjustments to a new rule governing international money transfers, which was set to come into effect early next year.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the decision to do this was made after several banks claimed that the remittance changes would be counter-productive and result in them having to withdraw the service altogether.
This would be a major blow to the country, given that it wires more money abroad than any other nation. The World Bank estimated that in 2010, people living in America sent $51 billion (approximately £32 billion) to other places in the world. It is, to say the least, important to expats and businesses in general.
The idea of the new remittance amendment was to increase transparency in this process. It required those offering money transfer services to make certain additional disclosures, including foreign taxes, third-party fees and the processes they undertake when money is sent to the wrong account.
“Some regulated entities identified issues that pose practical challenges in implementing the new law”, the CFPB noted on its website.
“To address these issues, next month we will propose a narrow set of changes to the remittance rule. We’ll work on a fast track to finalise changes to the rule. The proposed changes would improve implementation of the new law while keeping the important new protections for consumers intended by the Dodd-Frank Act.”
The Dodd-Frank Act came into effect in 2010 and has overhauled the way the country’s financial services are regulated. It was a response to the financial crisis of 2008, and is considered one of the most significant regulatory reforms to have been undertaken since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
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