December 2010: CFPB Implementation Team Reaches 100 Employees

Each day this week, we will feature information about an important milestone in the establishment of the new consumer bureau. Today’s post is about staffing up the bureau. Read more of this series.

The CFPB is a brand-new government agency, and all new things have to start somewhere. In the case of the consumer bureau, it started with several employees on an implementation team shortly after the Dodd-Frank Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. Of course, the CFPB will have many responsibilities – promoting financial education, gathering and analyzing data on the consumer financial markets, and enforcing federal consumer financial laws, among others. With so many jobs to do, the CFPB needs more than just a few employees.

The arrival of the 100th team member occurred less than five months after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. It served as yet another tangible indication of the consumer bureau’s growth. Today, CFPB team members are hard at work on the nuts and bolts – getting computers and laptops, writing job descriptions, and building an IT platform – and thinking about policy priorities and how to design an effective enforcement strategy. As the team grows, it will take on more people who will be cops on the beat – supervising the biggest banks and the payday lenders, mortgage servicers and other non-bank financial companies.

The implementation team consists of people from a variety of backgrounds, from across the country, at various points in their careers. It also includes employees who have previously worked at many other government agencies. This is fitting, since the CFPB will consolidate consumer protection authorities currently fragmented across seven agencies.

The implementation team commemorated the arrival of the 100th team member with a potluck dessert party, which also doubled as a holiday celebration. The highlight of the party was a creative interpretation of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, reworked to reflect the upcoming July 21 deadline, called The Night Before Transfer.