Recently it was announced that Raj Date, the second highest ranking official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), plans to resign from the agency he helped create. Date is departing the CFPB on or around January 31, 2013 after the agency finalizes the slate of mortgage rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act.
Mr. Date has had a long and varied career in and around U.S. financial institutions – as a strategy consultant, as a bank executive, and on Wall Street. In 2009, Mr. Date founded and served as Chairman and Executive Director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, a private, non-profit research and policy organization that supported reform of the U.S. financial system. He previously worked at Deutsche Bank Securities and Capital One Financial Corp.
Mr. Date spent more than two years building the agency, playing a number of key leadership roles. He most recently served as the Deputy Director of the CFPB. Previously he served as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the CFPB from August of 2011 to January of 2012, and as the Associate Director for Research, Markets, and Regulations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. After Elizabeth Warren, the original nominee for director of the CFPB, departed in August 2011, Mr. Date ran the agency until President Barack Obama appointed Richard Cordray to the director post in January 2012. Mr. Cordray appointed Mr. Date as the agency’s deputy director the next day.
Mr. Date has been the ultimate public servant. He left a lucrative career with Cambridge Winter to walk into a political maelstrom to build the CFPB. According to all accounts, the Deputy Director is extremely intelligent, a very hard worker and a regular guy. His voice of reason and knowledge of the industry will be much missed. He is resigning to spend more time with his family.
I am starting the rumor that Mr. Date may be returning to a position he held early in his career – the captain of the Mark Twain Riverboat at Disneyland.
