CFPB Under Incoming Trump Administration Likely to Roll Back Credit Card and Banking Rules

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will likely reverse several of its Biden-era rules and scale back its regulatory agenda after President-elect Donald Trump assumes the presidency and changes the agency’s leadership. Though Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for a Republican return to the presidency, has called for eliminating the CFPB, many do not expect this outcome to come to fruition. However, Trump is expected to fire current CFPB Director Rohit Chopra shortly after taking office in January.

Joann Needleman, the leader of Clark Hill PLC’s financial services regulatory and compliance practice, said that the Bureau will most likely focus less on prescriptive guidance and ambitious regulations, and instead police consumer financial services markets through more traditional tools used by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

“They’re going to supervise and they’re going to enforce. They’re really going to look for the baddest of the bad,” she said, according to Bloomberg Law. She also noted that most of the rules implemented by Chopra are likely to be eliminated or weakened under a new CFPB Director.

Many of the CFPB’s rules under Chopra have been challenged in court, including caps on credit card late fees, collecting small business borrowers’ demographic data, medical debt collection restriction, and applying some credit card restrictions on buy now, pay later (BNPL) products.

Any significant changes to a final rule would have to be done through the notice-and-comment rulemaking process. The Bureau, along with trade groups that filed lawsuits, can put litigation on hold while the CFPB reconsiders those rules, which occurred under Trump’s first administration in 2017 with the agency’s rule to limit payday lending.

The CFPB finished its open banking rule in October, which allows customers to easily share their bank account and credit card data with banks and fintech applications. The rule did not face significant opposition from Republicans, so it has a better chance at surviving, Needleman pointed out.

“There’s a lot of Republicans that want data privacy, open banking,” she said.