Indian American CFPB Director Rohit Chopra Named One of ’10 Policymakers to Watch in 2022’ by American Banker

Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (consumerfinance.gov photo)

India-West Staff Reporter

American Banker, a Manhattan, New York-based trade publication covering the financial services industry, Dec. 29 named its “10 Policymakers to Watch in 2022,” among which was Indian American Rohit Chopra.

Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is one of the appointees by the Biden administration who have set out to unwind certain Trump-era policies and signaled a tougher approach to supervision and enforcement, said the publication in the report.

Regulators appointed by the administration and Democratic lawmakers pushed a more progressive agenda around climate change risks, affordable housing, diversity in the financial system, and pumping the brakes on technological innovations such as cryptocurrency, it added.

Chopra was one of the key figures in both the executive and legislative branches who will try to advance Biden’s financial policy priorities in 2022, the publication said.

Chopra is proving to be one of the most influential financial regulators in the Biden administration, the publication said, noting that he sent shockwaves through the capital in December when he and another Democratic member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board announced a request for public input on bank merger policy.

Chopra previously was a member of the Federal Trade Commission and had served in the Obama administration as the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman. At the CFPB, he is moving move quickly to shape policy on competition in financial services, and has said he plans to crack down on repeat corporate offenders and executives who engage in wrongdoing, the report said.

Though he has been director of the CFPB for just over two months, Chopra has already ordered six Big Tech firms to turn over information on their payment systems, warned of a crackdown on big banks’ illegal overdraft practices and urged state attorneys general to file more enforcement cases under federal law, according to the publication.

American Banker is a resource for senior executives in banking and financial services, keeping its users updated on vital developments and focusing sharply on their most important concerns — innovation, transformation, and disruption; technology, regulation, and reform, the site says.