Two officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are leaving the agency, clearing the way for President Biden’s nominee to lead the bureau to assemble his own team.
Bryan Schneider, the CFPB’s associate director of supervision, enforcement and fair lending, is leaving the bureau on July 1, a CFPB spokeswoman confirmed. A successor has not been named and Schneider did not say what his next job would be.
The CFPB also is losing one of its longest-serving leaders. Peggy Twohig, an assistant director of supervision policy and strategy, who helped set up the agency before its inception in 2011, is retiring.
Schneider was hired in 2019 by former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger and led a
Last year, Schneider tried to have the CFPB's supervision team be the final arbiter of decisions on investigations and enforcement actions. But the bureau's enforcement staff objected to the changes, which resulted in further management upheaval.
The proposed shake-up would have stripped authority from then-CFPB Enforcement Director Tom Ward, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil division, who had been hired by Kraninger last year. Ward left the bureau in May and is now a partner at Sidley Austin.
Though Kraninger had viewed the CFPB's supervision work as the heart of the agency, many expect Rohit Chopra — the Biden administration's nominee to lead the bureau — to follow in the footsteps of former CFPB Director Richard Cordray by making enforcement the core tool. The agency under acting Director Dave Uejio has already named Cara Petersen as acting head of enforcement and has launched an effort to recruit enforcement attorneys.
Twohig is one of the bureau's longest-serving employees. She sent an email to some staff sayng that she is retiring. The CFPB confirmed that Twohig is retiring
A former litigator, Twohig was responsible for implementing the first federal supervision program for nonbanks that included oversight of credit bureaus, mortgage lenders, mortgage servicers and payday lenders.
She previously served as director of the Office of Consumer Protection at the Treasury Department in the Obama administration, where she worked on the proposal creating the CFPB after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act. Before joining Treasury, Twohig spent 17 years at the Federal Trade Commission, where she focused on enforcement and policy issues related to consumer financial services. She previously had been a litigator at Arnold & Porter.
“I appreciate Peggy and Bryan’s dedicated service to the CFPB, especially during my time as Acting Director," Uejio said in an emailed statement from a spokesman. "I wish them both the very best.”
