Cut the Cordray

CFPB boss will exit at end of month

The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — the federal regulator that over the last five years squeezed $12 billion from US banks caught doing wrong by their customers — is stepping down.

Richard Cordray, who’s led the CFPB since it was created in 2012, is widely expected to run for governor in his home state of Ohio.

The 58-year-old former Ohio attorney general often drew the ire of Republican lawmakers for being too aggressive in enforcing consumer-facing federal regulations — many of which were passed into law in the years following the Great Recession.

In one of his more noted cases, Cordray led a probe into Wells Fargo and the millions of fake accounts it created during a years-long effort to increase its revenues.

The CFPB fined the bank millions of dollars. In all, the agency returned $12 billion to about 30 million banking customers whose banks overstepped regulations.

Cordray’s term was set to expire in July next year.

The opening will allow President Trump to reshape the often criticized agency.

“For President Trump, it will be yet another opportunity to put his stamp on a nominee who is friendlier to business and more inclined to deregulate,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, said in a statement. “For consumers, the risk is that they will have fewer advocates working for them in the federal government.”

Cordray’s tenure coincided with a wave of Obama-era Wall Street regulations in the wake of the financial crisis.

While he led the agency — which was the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — Cordray cracked down on payday lenders, student loan scammers, high overdraft fees, shifty debt collectors, and other abuses by banks and other financial companies.

“Together we have made a real and lasting difference that has improved people’s lives,” Cordray said in a memo to CFPB staffers.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Richard Cordray is leaving at the end of the month.