The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: A First Year Retrospective by K&L Gates

By:  Laurence E. Platt, Steven M. Kaplan, Stephanie C. Robinson, Kristie D. Kully, David L. Beam, Melanie Hibbs Brody, Jonathan D. Jaffe, Nanci L. Weissgold, Holly Spencer Bunting, Kerri M. Smith, David A. Tallman, Eric Mitzenmacher, David G. McDonough, Jr., Rebecca Lobenherz, John L. Longstreth, Krista Cooley, Paul F. Hancock, David I. Monteiro, Michael J. Missal, Shanda N. Hastings, Noam A. Kutler, Matt T. Morley, Stephen J. Crimmins, Amanda B. Kostner, Karen Kazmerzak, Bruce J. Heiman, Daniel F. C. Crowley, Akilah Green

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau celebrates its first birthday, financial service providers mark the occasion with solemnity. It has been quite a turbulent year with the Bureau, which has made the most of its new statutory authority to issue several final and proposed regulations, initiate its supervisory oversight of the previously unsupervised, and assume the supervisory function of the federal banking agencies for large banks. It has also laid the groundwork for what is expected to be an active enforcement environment.

This retrospective of the Bureau’s first year of operations describes the Bureau’s most consequential actions since its launch on July 21, 2011. Its wide-ranging activities over the past year reflect a mandate that spans numerous industries within the consumer financial services sphere, including some industries that previously went unregulated. Among the topics covered in our retrospective are rulemaking in the mortgage market and other markets such as prepaid cards, supervision and examination of banks and nonbanks, enforcement of federal consumer financial laws, and the debate over the agency’s legitimacy.

To download the retrospective, click here.