What’s the official name of the federal consumer financial protection agency: CFPB or BCFP? The new director, at least, isn’t taking any chances – as her two-sided business card displays both, recent names of the organization.
According to images posted by a lobbyist who met with Director Kathleen (“Kathy”) Kraninger Tuesday, her business card (on one side) displays the current, official name of the agency: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), along with the logotype featuring that name.
On the other side (unclear which is the “obverse” or “reverse”) the card displays “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP),” the moniker given to the bureau by its former Acting Director John (“Mick”) Mulvaney.
Mulvaney unilaterally changed the name of the bureau from CFPB – which it had been known as since its inception in 2011 – to the “BCFP” name last spring. In announcing the change (to the applause of an audience of bankers at a conference in Washington in April), Mulvaney indicated he was only following the law. “That is what the law says,” Mulvaney noted; he also said the first thing he did when he was named acting director of the agency in November 2017 was to “read the law” creating the bureau.
However, one of the first acts by Kraninger in succeeding Mulvaney in December 2018 as permanent director was to change the name of the agency back to “CFPB.” At the time, she said in a memo to staff, that she had “officially halted all ongoing efforts to make changes to existing products and materials related to the name correction initiative.”
“For statutorily required reports, legal filings, and other items specific to the Office of the Director, we will use the Bureau seal and the statutory name we were given in Dodd-Frank,” Kraninger said. “The name ‘Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’ and the existing CFPB logo will continue to be used for all other materials,” she wrote.
Apparently, to place that policy into practice, Kraninger went with both names on her business card.