“CFPB RIP” was Elon Musk’s tweet on Feb. 7, when the billionaire was slashing his manner by way of federal businesses on the behest of his then-ally, President Donald Trump.

Rohit Chopra, former director of the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, had been fired Feb. 1. By Feb. 3, new performing director (and in addition, new Treasury Secretary) Scott Bessent had ordered CFPB employees to cease all rule-making and enforcement actions, amongst different actions.

A second performing director, Russell Vought — who additionally leads the Workplace of Administration and Finances underneath Trump — took over the company days later. Vought was a co-author of Mission 2025, the conservative governing blueprint, which acknowledged that “the next conservative President should order the immediate dissolution of the agency.”

Congress established the CFPB with the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, within the wake of the 2008 financial disaster. Certainly one of its targets was to strengthen and consolidate shopper safety powers that had been unfold throughout a number of authorities businesses, and the bureau was structured to be shielded from political interference.

“The consumer bureau’s statutory obligations are designed to make markets for consumer financial products and services work in a fair, transparent, and competitive manner,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who was instrumental within the bureau’s formation, wrote in 2011.

Since its creation, the watchdog company has introduced in regards to the return of greater than $21 billion to greater than 200 million customers who have been discovered to be victims of malfeasance by monetary service corporations.

Republicans and lots of banking officers, although, have lengthy accused the company of overreach.

Criticism spiked underneath Chopra’s management throughout former President Joe Biden’s administration. In a 2022 letter to Chopra, members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and City Affairs known as the CFPB “a lawless and unaccountable agency” that was “pursuing a radical and highly-politicized agenda unbounded by statutory limits.”

The Mission 2025 “Mandate for Leadership,” in calling for the CFPB’s elimination, characterised it as “a shakedown mechanism to provide unaccountable funding to leftist nonprofits politically aligned with those who spearheaded its creation.”

Within the weeks after Trump’s return to the presidency, it seemed like critics may lastly see the company totally dismantled. However the company nonetheless stands, no less than in identify. Its instant and long-term future stay cloudy at greatest, nevertheless, to the priority of shopper advocates.

“We are at a pivotal moment for all that was, all that has been and what could be,” says Amanda Jackson, director of shopper campaigns for People for Monetary Reform, a nonprofit group centered on monetary fairness. “The CFPB has done tremendous work since its inception.”

“We’re seeing the agency pull back from prior commitments and that hurts everyone,” Jackson continues. “So it is a concerning moment. It’s what we spend a lot of time calling attention to — the integrity of the bureau, the fact that the bureau has done so much work — and all that, we are seeing, is being chipped away.”

The CFPB media workplace didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark from NerdWallet.

Quickly after Trump took workplace, the CFPB issued layoff notices to greater than 1,400 staffers, which might have left a employees of about 200. The CFPB’s union rapidly filed go well with to dam the motion, and in April, a U.S. District Court docket choose paused the layoffs. The Trump administration rapidly appealed the ruling. For now, the pause stays in place.

In Might, the U.S. Supreme Court docket rejected a problem to the CFPB’s funding mechanism, reversing an earlier choice by an appeals courtroom in Louisiana.

When the CFPB was established, Congress opted to have it funded through allocation from the Federal Reserve. This was a transfer to defend it from politicization within the annual congressional funds cycle. However critics have lengthy known as the funding mechanism unconstitutional.

Congress did handle to trim the bureau’s funding cap by nearly half within the “big, beautiful bill” handed and signed into legislation in early July. The invoice lower the CFPB’s accessible funding to six.5% of the Federal Reserve’s working bills, down from 12%, the restrict that has been in place because the company’s founding.

The lower has no instant impact, as CFPB’s present management has proven no inclination to request funding even on the new restrict, and at one level explored returning the bureau’s present steadiness to the Federal Reserve. However the lower will hamstring the power of future administrations to revive the CFPB’s earlier regulatory and investigative capabilities.

“Slashing the CFPB’s budget nearly in half will severely compromise its ability to stand up for consumers and take on big banks and unscrupulous financial firms when they cheat working families out of their hard-earned money,” stated Chuck Bell, advocacy program director at Client Experiences, in a ready assertion.

In the meantime, Home Republicans forwarded payments aiming to restrict quite a few features of the CFPB’s work, and extra broadly features of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that created the bureau. People for Monetary Reform helped manage opposition to the laws with an in depth letter signed by 68 civic and group organizations, and ultimately, the payments didn’t advance earlier than the Home went into summer season recess.

“So the wins are incremental, but they are there,” Jackson, of People for Monetary Reform, says.

By statute, the CFPB receives and responds to complaints from customers about monetary services. So far, the CFPB has acquired greater than 2.8 million complaints in 2025, and all indicators point out that CFPB employees proceed to observe and reply to those complaints.

The CFPB website reveals the next standing for 2025 complaints filed by way of July 22:

• Closed with clarification: 1,133,034.

• Closed with non-monetary aid: 982,712.

• Closed with financial aid: 11,648.

• Premature response: 6,517.

These percentages are roughly in step with figures reported for 2024.

The criticism database “is still active,” says Jackson. “It is something we too are trying to make sure remains active. We have not heard of reports from actual consumers that counter that.”

However the standing of the criticism course of and database is one thing her group is monitoring.

The CFPB started receiving and performing on shopper complaints in 2011. Grievance quantity started to speed up through the pandemic and continues to spike in 2025. Quantity did drop quickly in February of this 12 months — after the CFPB posted a 404 error on its residence web page for a number of weeks, on the behest of Vought — however recovered in March.

The overwhelming majority of complaints to the CFPB in 2025 contain credit score reporting, mirroring figures in 2024.

The extra acceptable query is perhaps: What has the CFPB undone?

Below Vought, the CFPB has dropped quite a few lawsuits towards monetary companies corporations. These circumstances have been dismissed “with prejudice,” which implies the CFPB forfeited the correct to sue over the identical claims once more sooner or later.

This has included circumstances towards such corporations as: fee firm Zelle and three of its homeowners (Financial institution of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo); Capital One; pupil mortgage servicer Pennsylvania Increased Schooling Help Company; and credit score reporting company TransUnion.

Most just lately, on July 1, the CFPB moved to withdraw from a $95 million settlement reached in 2024 with Navy Federal Credit score Union associated to overdraft charges. Below the settlement, the credit score union would have refunded $80 million to affected service members, along with paying a $15 million fantastic.

This got here regardless of an April 16 memo to employees stating that the bureau would “focus its enforcement and supervision resources on pressing threats to consumers, particularly service members and their families, and veterans.”

That memo introduced that the company would refocus its consideration on banks and different depository establishments reasonably than “nonbanks.” The memo additionally stated the company would deprioritize medical debt, pupil loans, digital funds and peer-to-peer platforms and lending, areas that the Biden-era CFPB had centered on.

In Might, the CFPB took a slew of actions to rescind guidelines set underneath the earlier administration, and to withdraw greater than 60 steering paperwork, together with coverage statements and advisory opinions, a few of which dated to the bureau’s inception.

Different earlier CFPB rule adjustments have been undercut by courtroom selections and congressional motion, together with a rule finalized within the waning days of the Biden administration however by no means put in force that will have banned the inclusion of medical debt on credit score studies. A choose dominated towards the medical-debt ban on July 11, doubtless sealing its destiny.

The CFPB underneath Biden had additionally finalized a rule to restrict the overdraft charges that banks can cost. Likewise, the rule by no means went into impact and was reversed in April by Congress. And, the CFPB had moved in Might 2024 to deal with “Buy Now, Pay Later” lenders as bank card suppliers, extending better safety to customers of these merchandise. The present CFPB introduced in Might that it will not prioritize enforcement actions towards BNPL suppliers.

On July 11, the present CFPB did announce a settlement with FirstCash, Inc., a pawnshop operator, which is alleged to have issued loans exceeding the utmost annual charge of 36%. Below the settlement, the defendants pays $4 million to the CFPB sufferer’s aid fund and put aside a further $5 million to handle future claims.

The CFPB nonetheless has no everlasting director. Trump had nominated legal professional Jonathan McKernan in early Might, however withdrew the nomination days later. Vought continues to function performing director.

For now no less than, the CFPB’s criticism database stays a viable manner for customers to handle points. As well as, states could decide up a number of the work that the present CFPB is strolling away from.

In the long run, although, customers could have to do extra to advocate on their very own behalf as federal oversight of the monetary companies trade erodes.

Jackson worries, nevertheless, that the diminution of the CFPB’s watchdog function will fall hardest on communities which can be already at better threat of economic predation.

“I want to name what that means for communities of color and our military personnel,” Jackson says. “This attack on the bureau is an attack on those people.”

(Photograph by Jemal Countess/Getty Photos)