CFPB Expands Employees, Budget in FY 2014, Actions Result in $4 Billion in Penalties, Compensation (Nov. 24, 2014)
The CFPB expanded its budget, number of employees and its complaint volume in fiscal year 2014, according to its annual report. The agency also reported that its enforcement actions resulted in nearly $4 billion in penalties and consumer compensation during the bureau’s fiscal year 2014.
The CFPB requested transfers of $534 million from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2014, compared with $518 million last year and $343 million in 2012. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB is funded primarily by transfers from the Fed. Funding is capped at a preset percentage of the total 2009 operating expenses of the Fed, subject to an annual adjustment and capped at $608 million.
The bureau has grown to 1,443 employees in 2014—45 percent of them in the supervision, enforcement and fair lending department, 27 percent in operations and 5 percent in consumer education and engagement. The CFPB had 1,335 employees last year. Complaint volume to the CFPB increased approximately 67 percent to 240,600 complaints in FY 2014 from 144,000 a year ago.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) gave the CFPB a clean audit of the bureau’s financial statements. However, the GAO noted a material weakness in internal control over its accounts payable reporting. “It is our understanding that this material weakness does not indicate that the bureau overspent its funds in fiscal year 2014 (in fact it appears to have underspent them),” Director Richard Cordray wrote in a reply to the GAO. “Nevertheless, the bureau is committed to correcting the imprecision in the accrual estimation process to ensure the proper accounting and reporting of the bureau’s expenses,” Cordray wrote.
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