BBB: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is shut down. What does this mean for consumers?

February 24, 2025

WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News Staff,

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in control of creating rules and taking enforcement actions to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by a wide range of financial institutions and businesses.

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Its actions involve banks, mortgage servicers, credit card companies, student loan processors, payday lenders, money transfer providers, credit reporting agencies and debt collectors.

The CFPB was created during the financial crisis of 2008 to protect consumers from doubtful financial products.

Some recent notable cases involving the CFPB have been the removal of medical debt from credit reports and caps on bank overdraft fees.

“Always necessary to remember that the agency itself has helped consumers to the tune of $21 billion through monetary compensation, loan principal reductions, cancelled debt and more,” said Toddnetta Trice, communications specialist for the Better Business Bureau.

What’s happening?

CFPB employees have been instructed to stop working on cases and new cases and offices have been closed. The agency had to suspend enforcement dates of any rules that have been finalized but yet put into effect.

Since the overdraft fee caps on banks don’t go into effect until October, it’s not on hold and could be thrown out by the Trump administration. The removal of medical debt from credit reports is also now suspended.

In December 2024, the CFPB sued Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo for allegedly failing to protect customers from fraud on the payment app Zelle. Last month it sued Capitol One for failing to pay more than $2 billion in interest to its customers for advertising a high-yield checking account that actually paid an interest rate close to zero.