CFPB is Hiring Attorneys, Beefing Up Enforcement Staff
The CFPB promises more aggressive enforcement despite an uncertain future
Consider yourselves warned.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is beefing up its enforcement staff and intends to hire 75 attorneys this year, agency officials confirmed this week.
The agency announcement about recruiting for the new positions reads, “The CFPB recently announced that we are significantly expanding our enforcement capacity in 2024 to build on our achievements so far.”
The agency is recruiting a diverse set of employees, Molly McQueen, an enforcement attorney said Tuesday, during an internet briefing for prospective attorneys. “You are not required to already be an expert in consumer financial law,” she added.
The enforcement division also will be hiring economists, investigators, analysts, and paralegals, she said. These positions will be located in the agency’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, as well as in regional offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Atlanta.
The agency said that in 2023 the CFPB filed enforcement actions and resolved six previously filed lawsuits. Those resolved lawsuits required those charged with violating the law to pay about $3.07 billion to compensate harmed consumers and $498 million in civil penalties.
CFPB officials cited their 2023 decision ordering Bank of America to pay more than $100 million to customers for “systematically double-dipping on fees imposed on customers with insufficient funds in their account, withholding reward bonuses explicitly promised to credit card customers, and misappropriating sensitive personal information to open accounts without customer knowledge or authorization.”
“This is a massive undertaking and a huge success,” Tracee Plowell-Page, a senior litigation counsel at the agency, said during Tuesday’s briefing.
Last year was the first time that a team of technologists dedicated to enforcement issues joined the bureau, according to the CFPB. “This cross-disciplinary team of technology experts has increased the Bureau’s capacity to enforce the law when emerging technologies harm consumers,” the agency’s announcement said.
Agency officials did not discuss the political timing of the staffing increases. The hiring comes during a presidential election year. President Biden has made eliminating so-called “junk fees” a major issue. Those fees include overdraft and credit card late fees. The agency is widely expected to issue its final rule on credit card late fees within the next few weeks.
If Biden is reelected, the CFPB is likely to continue its strict regulatory regime.
However, many Republicans disagree with that regime and a Republican president likely would be less aggressive, despite having a larger staff as a result of the Biden Administration’s hiring decisions.
The increased staff also comes at a critical time for the agency. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling on the agency’s funding scheme later this year. If the court decides that the funding is unconstitutional because it does not go through the appropriations process, it could call into question everything the agency has done since it was created by the Dodd-Frank Act.