The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) enforcement chief, Steven Antonakes, will serve as the bureau’s interim deputy director following the Jan. 31 departure of Deputy Director Raj Date, the bureau said. The CFPB previously announced Date would depart this month after the agency finalized numerous Dodd-Frank Act mortgage rules.
“We will be forever grateful to [Date] for his tremendous work to protect American consumers,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “As the CFPB’s first deputy director, Raj has helped to lead the agency’s organizational, strategic and policy efforts and put in place key new mortgage rules that will benefit all Americans.”
Date spent more than two years helping to build the agency, filling a number of leadership roles. Notably, Date led the CFPB as special adviser to the secretary of the Treasury before Cordray was appointed as the bureau’s first permanent director in January 2012. Date also served as associate director for research, markets and regulations.
Some CFPB watchers viewed the gregarious Date as a foil to the strait-laced Cordray. Date commonly cracked jokes during CFPB field hearings, and he sometimes began speeches with a self-deprecating story about his first job as a jungle cruise guide at Disneyland.
“Welcome aboard the world famous Jungle Cruise. My name is Raj and I’ll be your fearless skipper for the next 8 minutes and 15 seconds as we journey down the simulated tropical rivers of the world,” Date recounted to members of the American Bankers Association in June 2012.
“Unfortunately for you, my skills as a public speaker haven’t really progressed since then,” he continued.
Date’s departure also comes at an important time for the bureau, which is facing questions over its powers and the validity of Cordray’s appointment in the wake of a recent court opinion.
[To learn more about the court opinion and its possible impact, see: “Appeals court ruling casts doubt on Cordray appointment, CFPB activities”]
Before joining the CFPB, Date had a long and varied career in and around U.S. financial institutions — as a strategy consultant, as a bank executive and on Wall Street.
In 2009, Date founded and served as chairman and executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, a private, non-profit research and policy organization that supported reform of the U.S. financial system. He was previously a managing director in the Financial Institutions Group at Deutsche Bank Securities, where he led the firm’s investment banking coverage for the largest U.S.-based banks and thrifts. Before that, Date was senior vice president for corporate strategy and development at Capital One Financial, where he led mergers and acquisitions development efforts across the U.S. banking and specialty finance markets.
As Antonakes assumes this temporary role, he will maintain responsibility for his current duties as the associate director for Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending at the CFPB, the bureau said.
Antonakes’ background includes more than two decades as a financial services regulator. He first joined the CFPB in November 2010 as the assistant director of Large Bank Supervision and was named the associate director for Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending in June 2012.
Antonakes began his professional career as an entry level bank examiner with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Division of Banks in 1990. He served in numerous managerial capacities before being appointed by successive governors to serve as the commissioner of banks from December 2003 until November 2010, becoming only the second career bank examiner to ever serve in that capacity. In addition, he served as the first state voting member of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, as the vice chairman of the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, and as a founding member of the governing board of the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System
He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Penn State University, a Masters of Business Administration from Salem State University and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Law and Public Policy from Northeastern University.