CFPB Hires Industry Insiders

Well, alright, maybe not exactly "best friends" in the vein of a boy and his dog, but it appears that Elizabeth Warren doesn't intend to completely exclude industry insiders from the ranks at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As reported here, yesterday Ms. Warren announced two significant hires, Rajeev Date, a former Deutsche Bank and Capital One executive, and Elizabeth Vale, a former Morgan Stanley executive, to the respective positions of Associate Director for Research, Marketing and Regulations and Liaison to Community Banks and Credit Unions.

These hires follow a spate of hires in January, which saw the implementation team surpass 100, and may be viewed by the industry as tempering Ms. Warren's choice of Richard Cordray as the Bureau's Director of Enforcement. However, neither hire should be surprising. Neither Mr. Date nor Ms. Vale is actually running a Bureau division, and one of the first things that Ms. Warren did after her appointment as Special Assistant to the President was to extend an olive branch of sorts to the finance industry. The ability of that olive branch to withstand the weight of regulation and enforcement is yet to be determined.