The Financial Services Roundtable — a nearly 100-member advocacy organization whose supporters include a wide array of captives and commercial banks that offer vehicle financing — is four steps into a campaign the organization has called, “The CFPB Rumor Mill.”

Earlier this summer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a new policy proposal that would empower consumers to publicly voice their complaints about consumer financial products and services. When consumers submit a complaint to the CFPB, they would have the option to share their account of what happened in the CFPB’s public-facing Consumer Complaint Database.

CFPB director Richard Cordray insisted that publishing consumer narratives would provide important context to the complaint, help the public detect specific trends in the market, aid consumer decision-making and drive improved consumer service.

The proposal has been met with strong pushback including the Financial Services Roundtable, the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, The Clearing House and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce.

Officials from the Financial Services Roundtable went so far as to create a rebuttal campaign dubbed “The CFPB Rumor Mill.” One of the segments the organization rolled out highlighted what leadership believes are three problems with the bureau’s online complaint portal, including:

1. The CFPB is planning to launch a system to post anonymous, unverified consumer complaints about financial services companies online.

2.  Anybody can file a complaint, but the CFPB won’t independently verify who they are.  Neither can other consumers.

3. The complaint could be completely untrue, but it stays online. That’s a disservice to consumers who expect facts on government websites.

Financial Service Roundtable officials continued the campaign with another three-part rebuttal, offering what they believe are a trio of reasons why the complaint portal won’t be based on facts.

1. Government websites are supposed to be the place to go for people to find authoritative facts. By posting unverified information onto their government website, CFPB will be tacitly endorsing what is in the complaints. That doesn’t help consumers.

2. Information posted on a government-funded website, like the CFPB’s, is a government endorsement. The government shouldn’t be endorsing information it chooses not to verify.

3. The CFPB says financial services companies will be able to post responses to complaints. However, federal consumer privacy protections restrict financial companies from posting information about the customer or the circumstances. But if the institution doesn’t respond, consumers may be left uninformed.

“As a consumer educator, my reaction was disbelief that the CFPB could get it so wrong and shock that consumers, who expect and deserve facts from their government, would instead get rumors,” said Anne Wallace, senior director of consumer financial services for the Financial Services Roundtable.

“Imagine asking a police officer for directions in an unfamiliar city. You’d expect the police officer, a trusted law enforcement official, to point you in the right direction,” Wallace continued. “But what if you followed the directions, only to find out the police officer had pointed you in the wrong direction? Would you still place your confidence in that government representative as an official source of reliable information?

“Of course not. And that’s why the CFPB’s plan to post consumer narratives is so baffling,” she went on to say.

More material associated with the ongoing campaign is available at www.cfpbrumors.com.