RSSGiven that only a basic CFPB organizational chart – without names – exists on the agency’s web site, CFPB Journal did some digging to offer a more thorough look at the other leaders and staff members who will shape the bureau going forward.
Many vacancies remain at this point, both within the upper positions and throughout the organization. “The bureau expects to hire about 1,500 employees over the next several years. That includes about 300 employees who will come from the other banking regulators, primarily from the Federal Reserve, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office,” American Banker reported. The bureau now has about 200 people on staff, according to the June 15 article.
Within the last six weeks, the CFPB sent out several hundred job offers to personnel from the federal agencies that will be transferring consumer financial protection functions to the bureau, including the now-closed Office of Thrift Supervision, said Joanne Barefoot, co-chair of Treliant Risk Advisors, during an American Banker webinar on June 29.
“They’re in the process of finalizing the hiring picture of people who will be coming in with bank examination backgrounds. To my knowledge, it is not clear yet how well that is going to populate the necessary levels and ranks and locations of what they’re going to need. I know the people at the agency are optimistic that this is going to click into place very well, but we do have a short time until the doors open,” Barefoot said.
She added that the CFPB is setting up its network of field personnel across the country. “That’s going to be very interesting, with lots of people working from their homes with their laptops, in a situation where there isn’t an existing infrastructure,” she said.
As an interesting side note, the examiner forces for the bank supervision and the non-bank supervision areas will be combined, rather than having separate teams focused on each, Barefoot said.
The CFPB had job openings for its offices in Washington, DC, New York, Chicago and San Francisco listed on its web site as of July 1, with pay ranges starting at $72,773 for a financial education specialist and topping out at more than $250,000 at the top of the scale, for a supervisory examiner/assistant regional director.
“Not only is the bureau hiring, but they are paying above government scale. They are hiring the best and the brightest, and they are paying for it. There are opportunities out there for those who want those jobs, and I would encourage anyone out there in the industry to do so, because there have been a lot of people hired on the consumer side,” said Richard Gottleib, director of the Financial Industry Group at the Dykema law firm in Chicago, during the American Banker webinar.
In a February entry on the CFPB blog, HR manager Dennis Slagter explained that each principal function within the bureau has the title “associate director,” all of whom report directly to the director. “Assistant Directors will head up the working teams, such as Credit Card Markets or Fair Lending. This naming convention will provide greater clarity about the structure of the organization as we move forward,” he wrote.
Read the latest Organizational Chart complied by CFPB Journal
