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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has named Steve Antonakes as acting deputy director following the departure of Raj Date from that position on Thursday.
January 31 -
Raj Date, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's No. 2 who has helped build the bureau from the ground up, rejected the claim that the 'qualified mortgage' rule will push lenders out of the business and said the mortgage industry managed "to do almost everything wrong" prior to crisis.
January 29 -
Raj Date, the deputy director at CFPB, is seen as a moderating influence at the agency, given his past experience as a banker. His pending departure leaves bankers nervous about the future.
November 13
WASHINGTON — Raj Date, the former deputy director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has started a multi-faceted bank advisory firm.
Date resigned from the CFPB earlier this year after spending two years helping to build out the agency and crafting a slew of new mortgage rules. At the time, he gave no indication of his future plans.
But in a phone interview on Tuesday, Date said he has formed an advisory firm, Fenway Summer LLC, in Washington to focus on consumer finance issues. The firm, named after Date's Boston roots, is focused on three areas: advising large financial companies, supporting merger and acquisitions through private equity partnership, and incubating startup businesses.
"There is a ton of opportunity to build and refine consumer finance into a better industry," said Date, the managing partner at Fenway Summer. "We're really on the cusp of being able to have financial companies that are more transparent to customers in a way that's more efficient to operate; and to take advantage of data and analytical tools that five years ago didn't even exist."
Date is currently building out his firm but he has extensive previous experience as a consultant, bank executive and regulator. Date worked for Capital One Financial Corp. and Deutsche Bank Securities before heading a nonprofit think tank, Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institution Policy, in 2009.
He joined the CFPB in 2010 to help Elizabeth Warren set up the agency, and became its acting leader after Warren left to run for Senate in Massachusetts a year later. Date was appointed the agency's deputy director in 2012 after President Obama made a controversial recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the agency.
"I want to be a part of making changes happen — whether it's in the context of helping existing banks compete in the marketplace … or seeding management teams and entrepreneurs," he said. "It's about letting them do what they do best."
