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While most of the attention so far has focused on who will be the director of the CFPB, would-be employees are anxious about how the agency plans to fill the lower ranks.
June 10 -
I just don't get it. Why is the White House floating Raj Date, one of Elizabeth Warren's top lieutenants at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as the agency's potential director? Don't get me wrong, Date is eminently qualified for the job. A former banker and financial analyst, Date no doubt has the chops for the post. What I don't understand is the political motivations behind floating his name at all.
June 10
The man considered by many to be President Obama's eventual choice to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promised that the agency will be "thoughtful" when it officially opens for business on July 21.
At the same time, though, Raj Date, a top lieutenant to Elizabeth Warren during the agency's start-up phase, told a group of bankers in Orlando that the CPFB also will be "unafraid" to carry out is mission of bringing transparency to consumer finance.
"We are going to succeed in our mission," Date said at Consumer Bankers Association conference. "It is not my plan to fail. Don't listen to what people say — watch what we do."
After Date's talk, Consumer Bankers Association President Richard Hunt complimented CPFB officials for "being extremely accessible" to industry players. But Hunt also told Date that "there is still some fear among my members" that the new agency will be overzealous in how it regulates lenders.
Date, currently the bureau's associate director of research, markets and regulations, responded by saying bankers shouldn't fret too much about the CPFB's broad authority to write new rules because "we have a lot of tools, not just rules." And besides, he added, adopting new rules "are not necessarily the most effective or efficient manner" in which to oversee consumer finance.
But when rules are necessary, Date also promised, the agency would be "deliberative" and use them "in a fact-based and measured way."
One banker who isn't terribly concerned about the impact the CFPB will have on his business, is Richard Davis, president of U.S. Bancorp, who in an earlier conference session basically told his fellow bankers to get over it.
Davis, whose institution is the nation’s sixth largest residential funder, advised his colleagues not to worry too much about the CFPB's impact on their businesses. "It is just simply timely and topical because it's new and we haven't had it before," he said. "But I don't think it's going to be harmful."
