- Key Insight: Washington Federal Bank and Planet Home Lending are only the latest in a long list of businesses against which the CFPB has terminated its consent orders.
- Supporting Data: Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the CFPB has dropped dozens of enforcement actions and initiated only two.
- Expert quote: "It's clear that they are trying to do as much as they can to make their remit as small as possible," said Amanda Fischer, chief operating officer of Better Markets.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has added two more lenders to the long list of companies that are no longer subject to an agency enforcement action.
The CFPB quietly terminated its consent orders against Washington Federal Bank and Planet Home Lending on Sept. 18, the same day it dropped similar orders against Apple and U.S. Bank. In WaFd's case, the termination ended the bank's compliance requirements five years early.
Earlier this week, anonymous CFPB employees
Critics of the Trump administration have accused the CFPB of shrinking its own authority down to nothing.
"It's clear that they are trying to do as much as they can to make their remit as small as possible," Amanda Fischer, chief operating officer of the progressive nonprofit Better Markets, told American Banker earlier this week.
WaFd's consent order dates back to 2020, when the CFPB charged it a $200,000 penalty over erroneous mortgage data and other violations. The Seattle-based bank was also subject to a set of compliance and oversight conditions, which had been set to last until October 2030.
Under the termination order, those conditions have now ended. The order did not explain its reasoning for cutting the compliance plan short, but it did mention that WaFd has already paid the $200,000 fine.
The other terminated consent order concerned Planet Home Lending, a Long Island, New York-based mortgage lender. In 2017, the CFPB accused the firm of engaging in an illegal quid pro quo with another lender, the now-defunct Prospect Mortgage. According to the CFPB, Planet pushed its clients to refinance their mortgages with Prospect, which then paid Planet a cut of the proceeds.
In the consent order, the CFPB ordered Planet to pay $265,000 to redress affected customers, and the bureau stipulated a number of other compliance and reporting requirements. In last week's termination order, the bureau said the firm had already fulfilled many of those conditions.
"To this date, Respondent has fulfilled several obligations under the Consent Order, including, among other things, implementing the required Redress Plan, paying consumer redress of $265,000, and changing business practices in light of the violations identified in the Consent Order," the bureau wrote in an order signed by acting Director Russell Vought.
WaFd, Planet Home Lending and the CFPB had not responded to American Banker's request for comment by the time this article was published.
Since the beginning of Trump's second term, the CFPB has come under fire on multiple fronts. In April this year, the Trump administration fired close to 1,500 of the CFPB's workers, or about 90% of its staff, before a federal court
In July, Congress passed a Republican-backed spending bill that cut the CFPB's funding almost in half. Earlier this month, the agency warned employees to expect
Active CFPB employees, who spoke anonymously out of fear of reprisal, told American Banker earlier this week they believe the financial squeeze is part of the reason the bureau is dropping so many consent orders. Since January, the CFPB has withdrawn or dismissed
