The man considered by many to be President Obama's eventual choice to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promised that the agency will be "thoughtful" when it officially opens for business on July 21.
At the same time, though, Raj Date, a top lieutenant to Elizabeth Warren during the agency's start-up phase, told a group of bankers in Orlando that the CFPB also will be "unafraid" to carry out is mission of bringing transparency to consumer finance.
"We are going to succeed in our mission," Date said at CBA Live 2011. "It is not my plan to fail. Don't listen to what people say -- watch what we do."
After Date's talk, Consumer Bankers Association President Richard Hunt complimented CFPB officials for "being extremely accessible" to industry players. But Hunt also told Date that "there is still some fear among my members" that the new agency will be overzealous in how it regulates lenders.
Date, currently the bureau's associate director of research, markets and regulations, responded by saying bankers shouldn't fret too much about the CFPB's broad authority to write new rules because "we have a lot of tools, not just rules." And besides, he added, adopting new rules "are not necessarily the most effective or efficient manner" in which to oversee consumer finance.
But when rules are necessary, Date also promised, the agency would be "deliberative" and use them "in a fact-based and measured way."
One banker who isn't terribly concerned about the impact the CFPB will have on his business, is Richard Davis, president of U.S. Bancorp, who in an earlier conference session basically told his fellow bankers to get over it.
Davis, whose institution is the nation’s sixth largest residential funder, advised his colleagues not to worry too much about the CFPB's impact on their businesses. "It is just simply timely and topical because it's new and we haven't had it before," he said. "But I don't think it's going to be harmful."
