FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra to be Named CFPB Director – A Strong Consumer Advocate and Aggressive Law Enforcer – JD Supra
Written by: Hudson Cook, LLP
This week, we learned that President-elect Biden intends to nominate FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra to serve as the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Chopra is a smart, articulate, and strong consumer advocate who will be well received by the Bureau’s staff and consumer advocates. I anticipate that he will be at least as aggressive as former Director Cordray, if not more, in seeking to expansively use the Bureau’s tools, including law enforcement and rulemaking.
Chopra and I were among the earliest founding members of the CFPB implementation team that started up the Bureau in 2010. When the Bureau went live on July 21, 2011, Chopra and I transitioned to CFPB leadership positions – Chopra as head of the student lending market’s office and I as a litigation deputy in the Enforcement Office. Chopra is not a lawyer (he has a BA from Harvard and an MBA from the Wharton School), but his aggressive “prosecutorial” style was apparent even then. During these early years, he coordinated closely with the Enforcement Office in formulating the actions taken against for-profit schools.