The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau halted hundreds of supervisory and enforcement matters and disrupted its consumer complaint routing after a series of stop-work orders and contract cancellations in early 2025, according to a report released last week by the Office of Inspector General for the Federal Reserve Board and the CFPB.
The review was requested by members of Congress. The OIG said it did not assess whether the actions complied with law, because that question is the subject of pending litigation.
Supervision staff initially ceased all activity, pausing 274 examinations and 189 monitoring events, for 463 supervisory events total. Enforcement halted all enforcement-related activity and paused 80 investigations. From February 2025 to January 2026, the bureau dismissed 18 ongoing litigation cases and withdrew as plaintiff in another, while initiating two new investigations. As of January 2026, staff had been authorized to resume 14 paused examinations, and leadership had approved a 2026 examination calendar of 64 examinations scheduled to begin in May 2026.
The agency had 525 active contracts as of Jan. 20, 2025. It canceled 91 through January 2026, allowed 204 to expire, reinstated 16 and awarded 59 new ones. A termination notice to the consumer complaint database contractor left complaints unrouted to companies from Feb. 11 to Feb. 27, 2025, and the call center went down for one day. Those disruptions contributed to a backlog of roughly 16,400 complaints requiring manual routing. As of June 2026, about 17,100 complaints required manual routing, of which about 3,800, or 22%, had been pending more than 30 days.
The bureau dismissed all 182 probationary and term employees before courts ordered reinstatement, and sent reduction-in-force notices to more than 1,400 employees, about 87% of staff, before a court enjoined the action. In March 2026 leadership approved a plan to cut 618 positions and retain 556. On July 10, 2026, the district court partially stayed proceedings until a new director is confirmed or Jan. 4, 2027.
