While not a lot may be known about Dave Uejio, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he is not looking to just keep the director’s seat warm for Rohit Chopra, who has been tapped by President Biden to be the next director of the agency, according to a published report. But any decision that Uejio said he will make will be ones that are in “directions that Rohit would want to take the bureau,” according to the report.
Uejio has spent nearly a decade at the CFPB and was the agency’s chief strategy officer when he was tapped to be acting director. That job should have gone to Tom Pahl, who was the CFPB’s deputy director, but he retired on the same day that Kathleen Kraninger announced her resignation as director last Wednesday.
Uejio sent out a email to his fellow CFPB co-workers after he was named acting director, laying out his priorities and saying that he plans on being more than a placeholder until Chopra’s nomination is confirmed by the Senate. Uejio and Chopra both worked together at the CFPB when Chopra was the agency’s student loan ombudsman under former director Richard Cordray. Those priorities include responding to the “challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic and addressing racial inequities in lending,” according to the report.
Everyone in the accounts receivable management industry is expecting the CFPB to increase its enforcement activity under Chopra and during the Biden administration. The one great unknown is what, if anything, will happen to the debt collection rule, which was issued in two parts last October and December and is scheduled to go into effect this November.
“I believe the bureau can and must do more to meet the moment to ensure we are taking all available measures to protect consumers, particularly the most vulnerable,” Uejio’s email said, according to the report.
