An Insider’s View of the CFPB

Consumer Finance Monitor

Our special guest this week is John Tonetti. After decades as an industry risk executive, Mr. Tonetti joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), where he worked for many years in roles including Debt Collection Program Manager, senior policy analyst, and internal consultant on numerous issues including debt collection and risk management policies and examinations. In this episode, Mr. Tonetti shares his perspectives from the point of view of an agency insider who served under every CFPB director and acting director in office to date.

We first discuss the pitfalls of the CFPB’s leadership structure, which gives a single individual broad regulatory power over “the largest financial system that has ever existed”, and Mr. Tonetti’s observations on the contrasting leadership and rulemaking approaches taken by the various CFPB directors and acting directors. We then turn to consideration of regulations and guidance recently proposed and adopted by the CFPB, including flaws in the agency’s approach to obtaining and utilizing data on which its mandates are based. We ask and respond to the question of whether the CFPB, on more than one occasion, has exceeded its authority, and how the courts have reacted and likely will react.

Alan Kaplinsky, former practice leader and current Senior Counsel in Ballard Spahr’s Consumer Financial Services Group, hosts this week’s episode.