Coming off what could easily be classified as the most tumultuous year of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) existence, some legal experts are hopeful for a more steady approach from the bureau in the foreseeable future and are advising their clients to think twice before diverting resources away from compliance.
The outlook for the bureau’s future under the Trump administration and beyond was the focal point of a session at the Consumer Bankers Association’s 2026 annual conference in San Diego, titled, “CFPB Crosswinds: Making Sense of a Shifting Regulatory Force.”
The session featured insight from Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP Partner Robert Maddox, Holland & Knight LLP Partner Eamonn Moran and Spencer Fane Partner LLP Mike G. Silver. Moran spent two years in the CFPB’s Office of Regulations and Silver worked at the bureau for 12 years.
Wells Fargo’s Head of Horizontal Aligned Compliance Programs Jennifer Ruggiero moderated the session.
Uncharted waters
Based on what they observed during President Donald Trump’s first term in office, Moran noted many people expected to see the agency undergo a similar transformation – characterized by a stark change in leadership direction and a much lighter touch on supervision and enforcement – the second time around. However, between the massive reduction in force (RIF) notice, the temporary takeover by the Department of Government Efficiency and the efforts to defund the agency, that has proven not to be the case.
“I think many of us used the Trump 1.0 model as a reference point for figuring out what to expect during Trump 2.0,” Moran said. “Clearly, I think those of us that had been thinking that, including myself, were probably a little bit off course.”
Amidst the various developments at the bureau since February of last year, the challenge for compliance professionals proved to be keeping up with the changes initiated by the agency and determining which ones would actually stick so they could plan accordingly.
While CFPB leadership has framed the withdrawal of dozens of guidance documents and the shift in supervisory and enforcement priorities as a means of reducing compliance burdens, many financial institutions have to ask themselves whether it is worth it to make conforming adjustments to their compliance systems only to readjust once a new administration takes over.
Policy changes do not equal law changes
Moran suggested the possibility of another regulatory shift looming in the future presents the financial services sector with a lack of something it has been wanting from federal regulators for years, across multiple presidential administrations – consistency.
Maddox stressed that companies should not limit their perspective on the bureau and consumer protection enforcement to the immediate future, during which they may not have any significant supervisory demands placed on them. Instead, he suggested they consider the implications their actions taken today could have down the road after the next regime change.
“We’re looking at this through a different lens than we’ve ever had before,” Maddox said. “And in this case, it has to be not only about what’s happening in [spring] of 2026 … but what does this look like in the first quarter of 2029? How can [my business] prepare to make sure that we are ready at this time?”
He said companies will have to prepare for how they will answer two of the most concerning questions they could receive from a prudential regulator or the CFPB: “What does your staffing model look like?” and “How much has it changed?” At that point, companies will be expected to account for any decisions to allocate resources away from compliance activities.
While companies may try to explain these staffing changes as aligning with the CFPB’s altered priorities, Maddox said he would advise business owners to remember one key thing that future regulators might say in response: “The policy changed but the law did not.”
He further advised that companies should not view the reduced supervisory pressure under the current administration as anything more than a brief respite from the norm.
Could political pressure help level its approach?
During a hearing before the House Financial Oversight Committee in March, lawmakers pressed acting CFPB director Russell Vought to direct the agency’s focus toward rulemaking activities favored by the financial services industry, such as those related to open banking, data privacy, small-dollar lending and disparate impact claims.
Moran pointed to a quote by Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) during the hearing, which he felt summed up the committee’s expressed views.
“Everyone’s sober about what the path forward is for now,” Rose said. “Obviously, there’s a role the CFPB plays, so if they were to go away – which is not likely to happen in the current environment – there would still be a regulatory obligation there.”
With the realization that the agency is not on its way out, Silver suggested the CFPB may shift to a more balanced approach to its role as a federal regulator once some of the outstanding litigation matters involving the bureau and its personnel are settled.
“Eventually there will be a resolution to the lawsuit over the RIF, and there will be probably more job cuts, but I think with the activity that we’re seeing – the restarts of supervision, the restarts of enforcement, as well as the robust rulemaking activity – it does seem like there’s almost a default to a steady state that is finally happening right now, which is probably a very much lighter-touch bureau that is going to be active in the next few years.”
Complaint response changes
Ruggerio noted the CFPB’s complaint portal and intake process became one of the latest targets for changes under Vought’s leadership and asked Silver to share his thoughts on the implications.
The complaint portal is operated by the CFPB’s Office of Consumer Response, which is one of the larger offices within the bureau. With this in mind, Silver said any changes to Consumer Response’s operations and protocols would tie into broader agency operations, including those mandated by statute.
Should the bureau enact changes that a court may view as disruptive to the bureau’s statutory obligations under the Dodd-Frank Act to accept and respond to consumer complaints, they could be the subject of continuing litigation.
“In the lawsuits that were happening last February and March and are starting to percolate in the courts … one of the issues that kept coming up repeatedly [in hearings] was the continuation of the consumer response function, and whether ‘Consumer Response,’ as an office, was operational and functional.”
He noted the National Treasury Employees Union and other plaintiffs introduced enough evidence to compel the D.C. District Court to rule that Vought’s proposal to fire 90 percent of the bureau’s staff would have hindered its ability to fulfill its statutory mandates. The proposed cuts would have included the elimination of a majority of the agency’s line staff tasked with handling complaints, thereby rendering its complaint function non-functional.
“The employees were essentially arguing … [Vought] didn't sign a piece of paper that said the CFPB is going away, but [he] effectively tried to kill it by 1,000 cuts,” Silver said. “Dodd-Frank says in the statute, you have to maintain a consumer complaint response function. But if you’re taking 10 or 15 steps which collectively make that function non-functional, then you’re essentially not complying with the statute, and that’s illegal.”
Silver likened Vought’s first RIF and his attempt to claim there was no funding available for the agency in December 2025 to attempted “kill shots” directed at the CFPB. He expressed optimism that the period of major attempts to completely reshape the agency may be winding down.
Shifting priorities
Ruggerio noted the CFPB’s enforcement and examination activities, many of which had been largely deprioritized in 2025, resumed in the early months of 2026 but have remained limited. She asked Maddox for his take on this development and how the role of state attorneys general in consumer protection enforcement may continue to evolve.
Maddox noted that while the bureau has resumed examination activity, it remains “very sparse,” due to its reduced capacity commiserate with its reduced supervisory staff. He said believes the bureau’s supervisory priorities, moving forward, will be tailored to align with the Trump administration’s agenda of improving affordability and rooting out fraud, based on the cases it has continued to work on.
“The question is … how do we deal with this kind of crosswind of issues that we do see?” Maddox said. “Perhaps there’s a leveling effect. We are beginning to see activity. We are beginning to see, as with any administration, priorities in certain areas.”
Maddox also urged companies not to lose sight of the fact that they have to account for various state-level legal interpretations of consumer protection laws, as well as differing interpretations of certain legal concepts, as exemplified by the CFPB and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with regard to “disparate impact.”
NOTE: This session took place prior to the release of the CFPB’s 2025 Consumer Response Annual Report and the revised reduction-in-force order to cut CFPB staff by approximately 50 percent.