As a lobbying group reportedly backed off its campaign against the agency’s drive to push full consumer complaint information online, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appears poised to tighten its regulatory grip on the auto finance industry.

With the CFPB set to have another field hearing about vehicle financing on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the bureau is about to launch in-depth reviews of 40 of the largest finance companies to determine whether the operations are following federal consumer-protection laws. People familiar with the situation told the newspaper the details on Tuesday.

The report indicated the CFPB’s investigation would include some of the largest captive finance companies for automakers such as Ford, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. According to Experian Automotive’s second-quarter data, just those four captives alone combined to hold 12.91 percent of the vehicle finance market.

The presumed announcement of the additional investigations is on top of what the American Financial Services Association expected to be revealed during Thursday’s event in Indianapolis. AFSA informed its members last week that the CFPB likely will release a larger participant proposed rule for auto finance companies and a white paper with more details on the bureau’s proxy methodology for identifying discrimination in indirect auto financing.

AFSA officials explained that under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to supervise nonbank covered persons of all sizes in the residential mortgage, private education lending and payday lending markets.

In addition, AFSA indicated the CFPB has the authority to supervise nonbank larger participants of markets for other consumer financial products or services, as the CFPB defines by rule. The CFPB already has released larger participant rules for the international money transfer, consumer debt collection, student loan servicing markets, as well as for credit reporting agencies.

“Auto finance companies will be designated as larger participants based on the annual volume of loan originations,” AFSA said. “It is not yet known if ‘annual volume’ will be calculated in terms of dollars or number of transactions.”

And with regard to this white paper, CFPB director Richard Cordray said the document was in the works when he testified during a hearing held by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee to share the CFPB’s semiannual report back in June.

“I think it’s been a source of frustration to the committee, to me and to the bureau that we’ve been back and forth on different kinds of information about this,” Cordray told House lawmakers about questions regarding disparate impact in the vehicle finance space. “I think we’re providing a lot of information, but people identify other information they want. Partly as a result of that, we are going to put out a white paper on the proxy methodology that will try to address this very directly later this summer.”

“We’ll continue to try to be responsive on this,” Cordray continued. “The reality is the auto industry and the auto lenders, they know all about this because they’re constantly monitoring it. They have to fend off private lawsuits whether the CFPB ever existed or not. They do the same analysis that we do, I believe. We’ve had lots of discussions with them. We’d like to have more. It’s been an ongoing dialogue.”

And speaking of dialogue, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, 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 — halted its extensive campaign the organization has called, “The CFPB Rumor Mill.”

This summer, the CFPB 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.

However, Bloomberg reported that the roundtable’s arguments against the database — including a four-point dispute that included graphics and videos — went against the thinking of organization members who reportedly were not consulted about the content and strategy.

The chief executive officer of the Financial Services Roundtable is Tim Pawlenty, a former two-term governor of Minnesota who ran for president in 2012. Pawlenty discussed the campaign against the CFPB complaint database with Bloomberg this week.

“We don’t have any more plans for a public process,” Pawlenty told Bloomberg, conceding that the membership wasn’t fully behind him on the campaign. “Some members had anxiety. It involved some risk.”

Bloomberg indicated that members who had concerns about the campaign included JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.

Editor’s Note: SubPrime Auto Finance News will be tweeting (@SubPrimeNews) during Thursday’s CFPB field hearing. Also look for special reports to be posted on the publication’s website (www.subprimenews.com).