fed withdraws consumer financial disclosure rules
Fed withdraws consumer financial disclosure rules June 22, 2004 5:22pm ET (Reuters)
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday withdrew proposals aimed at making financial services product disclosures clearer to consumers after strong industry objections to the changes.
The Fed had proposed rules aimed at ensuring information that banks and lenders give to borrowers and users of other financial services is conspicuous and easy to understand.
Proposed revisions to regulations would have recommended type size and use of short, explanatory sentences rather than legal jargon. The rules would have set a uniform standard for information given to borrowers and consumers of other types of financial services.
But industry commenters said changing forms would be costly and raise chances of lawsuits over unclear new standards. Consumer advocates did not think the changes were strong enough, the Fed said.
The Fed said it would try instead to improve disclosures for individual products rather than trying to write uniform standards that would apply to all of them.
