WASHINGTON—This week offered a brief but telling glimpse into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s plans for 2025—and then just as quickly, that glimpse disappeared.
The CFPB quietly published its new rulemaking agenda online, only to pull it down shortly thereafter.
When the site came back online, the page reverted to the agency’s Fall 2024 agenda, sources reported.
“No agenda has yet been published in the Federal Register, which is typically the official marker of release,” said Brandy Bruyere, partner at Honigman, LLP. “What’s more, I understand the CFPB was not alone—HUD and the Federal Housing Finance Agency also appeared to post their 2025 agendas prematurely. This suggests the government wasn’t quite ready to make those updates public, and the (CFPB’s) version that appeared was not intended to be treated as final.”
Still, the brief posting revealed something significant: The CFPB’s 2025 agenda contained roughly twice the number of items listed in 2024, sources reported. On paper, that signaled an ambitious workload for an agency that, under the Trump Administration, has seen staff reductions and faces the added complication of mass firings now greenlit by the courts.
Deregulation Still Requires Rulemaking
“It’s important to remember that deregulation is not the absence of rulemaking—it is a form of rulemaking,” Bruyere reminded. “Even when an agency seeks to eliminate or scale back existing rules, it must still comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires publishing proposals, inviting public comment, and addressing those comments in any final rule. While some may assume that ‘hitting delete’ is as simple as removing a line of code, in practice it takes legal work and resources to unwind a regulation.”
This may prove challenging for the Bureau, where the number of attorneys working on rule writing has reportedly declined as staff seek more stable employment.
“And although the CFPB has often been criticized for not fully accounting for public comments, rule preambles typically do address the categories of feedback received before explaining why certain perspectives were not adopted. That process takes time, people, and expertise,” Bruyere said.
A Possible Shift Toward Statutory Minimums
If the agenda that briefly appeared is any indication, financial institutions may see a narrowing of regulatory interpretation at the CFPB—focusing on the bare statutory minimums required by law. That aligns with the current administration’s stated policy of limiting agency discretion. But even such rollbacks create complex ripple effects.
“Take the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) as an example. The statute requires the collection of certain borrower data. Meanwhile, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) prohibits collecting some of that same data—except where HMDA or self-testing permits it. Amending HMDA regulations down to the bare statutory minimum would require carefully recalibrating what data is collected with mortgage applications,” Bruyere explained.
Looking Ahead
In the first Trump administration, the CFPB did not publish its initial “spring” agenda until fall, much later than usual. Bruyere said if history is any guide, it may take some time before a 2025 agenda is formally released.