Kraninger Reverses Course, Announces BCFP Name is Dead

The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is dead. Long live the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In one of her first official actions as director of the agency, Kathy Kraninger has announced that the regulator will henceforth use the name Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The announcement ends nearly a year of drama involving the name of the agency, which acting director Mick Mulvaney attempted to rename the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

“After being fully briefed on the costs, operational challenges and the effect on stakeholders, I have carefully weighed the options,” Kraninger wrote.
She added: “To be clear, I care much more about what we do than what we are called.”

Mulvaney said that referring to the regulator as the BCFP was the name used to describe the bureau in the statute that created the agency. The agency had gone by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since its inception in 2011.

Critics derided Mulvaney’s attempt to change the name as a means of making the agency seem more bureaucratic and less focused on consumers.

A report that was released earlier this month revealed that the companies regulated by the CFPB would be forced to spend nearly $300 million and the agency itself would spend $9 million to official change its name to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

When she met the press following being sworn in as director, Kraninger said she cared more about what the agency did than what it was called, comments she echoed in an email to CFPB employees yesterday, according to published reports.

“We have a legal name but will be using our colloquial name and the branded acronym ‘CFPB,’ Kraninger said in the email. “Many of us have legal names but use nicknames without much confusion.”

Whether that means the agency will continue to use the shield it released earlier this year that refers to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, remains to be seen.