On October 5, 2023, Jonathan Pompan was quoted in American Banker on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) plans to increase the number of the full-time employees in its enforcement division by 50%. According to the article, the CFPB is also hiring additional staff in its legal, operations and research, monitoring, and regulations divisions.
“The ramp-up in hiring would give the CFPB the capacity to take on 25 to 30 additional investigations, plus more enforcement actions and litigation stemming from exam findings,” said Pompan. “As an agency in its second decade, and despite a large swath of banks and nonbanks falling under supervision and examination authority, and having robust enforcement capacity, Chopra and his senior management team are no doubt aware that many financial institutions and service providers have not been scrutinized.”
Following last year’s appeals court ruling against the CFPB, some financial institutions have asked for enforcement actions to be paused, while others have sued the CFPB to temporarily halt rules from going into effect.
“For some companies and professionals, it is too easy to get distracted by optimistic or pessimistic hot takes, and lose sight of the importance of compliance," Pompan added. "While optimism and pessimism can be a driving force for believing the status quo will be blown up or continue, it must be tempered with a pragmatic commitment to compliance and continuing to call out the CFPB when they overreach or are wrong."
Click here to access the article.