Biden Administration

Rohit Chopra, President Biden's pick to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told a Senate panel he would do more to protect veterans from foreclosure, empower consumers to dispute data on their credit records and crack down on student loan servicers that aren't helping troubled borrowers.

During the Trump era, the bank regulators couldn’t see eye to eye on how to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act. But a looming leadership change atop the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is boosting optimism that they can harmonize their approaches.

In an analysis of the pandemic's impact on the housing market, the agency said nearly 10% of households could be at risk of eviction or foreclosure despite government programs to enable homeowners to delay their payments.

Rohit Chopra, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has not minced words in calling out private companies for wrongdoing. He could get a grilling from Banking Committee Republicans and some opposition on the Senate floor.

Detecting business dealings with banned parties means screening a maze of transactions, and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control supports calls for the industry to take a risk-based approach. But regulators effectively require banks to track everything, which is unproductive.

It would ignore technical glitches plaguing the entire Paycheck Protection Program and could end up delaying loans to larger borrowers who also need relief, bank executives and their trade groups say.

The Banking Committee will hold a confirmation hearing on March 2 for Rohit Chopra and Gary Gensler. They are the administration's picks, respectively, to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

More than a decade after the near collapse of the financial system and the bruising fight over Dodd-Frank put the industry and a Democratic administration in conflict, President Biden and the financial services sector are allied over the COVID-19 relief plan.

Only businesses with 20 or fewer employees will be eligible to apply for forgivable loans from the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program.

The agency is recruiting more attorneys and shuffling personnel under new Democratic leadership as it prepares to toughen oversight of the financial services industry.