Kathy Kraninger officially became director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late Monday following her Senate confirmation hearing last week.
Kraninger, 43, is the second permanent director of the CFPB, which carries a five-year term. She succeeds acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, who heads the Office of Management and Budget.
The previous permanent director, Richard Cordray, left the agency late last year.
Kraninger had been an associate director for general government at OMB but spent most of her career at the Department of Homeland Security. She will be speaking to the media at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Kraninger’s appointment rounds out the Trump administration’s picks to run all the major banking regulators, following the earlier confirmations of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell, Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Jelena McWilliams.
Although Kraninger has drawn plenty of attention, she has mostly been a blank slate on financial regulatory issues because she has no consumer finance experience.
At her confirmation hearing in July, Kraninger expressed support for pro-free-market views similar to those of Mulvaney, her boss at OMB, though she did say that some financial firms need regulatory scrutiny, such as credit bureaus and Wells Fargo.
Democrats opposed her nomination and have been frustrated that she refused to answer questions about her involvement in the administration’s now-rescinded “zero tolerance” policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the U.S. southern border.
