WASHINGTON, D.C. -

The reported acknowledgement by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that its use of disparate impact could over-count potential discrimination by indirect auto finance companies continues to churn the industry’s frustration with how the regulator operates.

Paul Metrey, chief regulatory counsel at the National Automobile Dealers Association, reiterated his position after American Banker reviewed a series of private documents exchanged between CFPB officials. The report indicated bureau officials say they prefer using disparate impact to the alternative where bias is underestimated.

“In order to have an accurate measurement of potential consumer harm, you have to isolate out legitimate pricing factors that can cause a deviation in the results. There are business factors that the Justice Department has recognized as legitimate that the CFPB appears to be blatantly ignoring during investigations,” Metrey said.

“There’s also an added reputational harm to the actors when the CFPB is basing damages off overestimated figures. If you look at the press releases of these enforcement actions, they are not holding back,” he went on to say.

The American Banker report also touched on subject that triggered a scathing editorial Investor’s Business Daily. The internal documents American Banker obtained as well as its sources reflected back on the largest enforcement action to date the bureau has made in the auto finance space. Sources said the CFPB “chose to act aggressively because it wanted to send a message to the industry and do so quickly,” when it bureau used disparate impact to hand out an $80 million penalty against Ally Financial at the end of 2013.

In light of all the reports and CFPB activity not only against Ally, but also the $24 million action against American Honda Finance, editors of Investor’s Business Daily urgently questioned the bureau’s continued use of proxies to find discrimination since auto finance applications do not require race disclosure.

“Not only does CFPB guess about the qualifications of the applicants they're comparing, it also makes faulty assumptions about the actual race of those applicants,” the publication said in its editorial posted here.

The publication closed its opinion piece by stating, “That’s a lot of speculation for something as serious as racism. Lacking hard evidence to support their discrimination claims, they show no concern about charging people with something that they didn't necessarily do.”