CFPB creates oversight office to deal with congressional requests

An onslaught of inquiries expected from Republican lawmakers next year has prompted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra to create a new office devoted solely to responding to congressional probes. 

In an internal memo to staff on Tuesday, Deputy CFPB Director Zixta Q. Martinez announced a ramping-up of hiring for the bureau’s newly created Office of Oversight and a separate strategy team and a realignment of the bureau’s legal and student loan offices. 

Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Martinez told CFPB staff that the bureau’s legal division will be split into two offices with all current staff remaining in the litigation office. Meanwhile, the bureau is ramping up hiring for the oversight office. 

“The CFPB operates within a dynamic environment, and right now signs point to increased oversight activity in the coming years,” Martinez wrote in a memo to staff. 

“Adding a group of staff dedicated to responding to these sorts of oversight inquiries will ensure staff can remain focused on their work while CFPB remains responsive to our oversight responsibilities. “

Republican lawmakers have made clear that they intend to investigate Chopra for his role as the alleged architect of a “hostile takeover” of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. late last year.

In December, Martin Gruenberg, now the FDIC’s acting chair, and Chopra, an FDIC board member, announced that the board’s three-member Democratic majority at the time had launched a review of bank merger policy without the support of then-FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams. The brouhaha sent shock waves through the Capitol. McWilliams resigned from the FDIC on Feb. 4, after claiming the majority had threatened her leadership.

Chopra has defended those actions as consistent with the law, even as Republican lawmakers seek to cast him as a villain who “successfully led a coup” at the FDIC.

“We cannot simply make up the fact that a chair can overrule a super-majority of the board,” Chopra told lawmakers in April.

Chopra also is dealing with pushback from banks and other businesses after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a six-figure ad campaign lambasting him in late June. The Chamber has taken out ads alleging that Chopra “has no accountability,” and is engaged in a “radical agenda and reckless approach,” in which he “changes rules by fiat.”

In the memo, Martinez announced that Pam Stewart, a CFPB senior advisor and former chief of staff, was named acting chief strategy officer, the same job that former acting CFPB Director Dave Uejio held in the Trump administration. 

In addition, the CFPB is combining two student loan offices that had been separated in 2019 under former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger. 

Both Chopra and CFPB General Counsel Seth Frotman previously served as student loan ombudsman for the bureau.

The bureau is consolidating the private education loan ombudsman, a role created by Kraninger to distinguish between private and public student loans, with a team devoted to students. The student lending office will be renamed the Office for Student and Young Consumers, Martinez wrote in the memo.  

“Our approach to this population needs to be as well-coordinated and efficient as possible,” she wrote.