ConsumerFinance.gov, and a New Approach to Regulation, Begin Operations Today

New features on consumerfinance.gov

Elizabeth Warren has become something of a hero for political progressives for her work to start the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new agency responsible for helping consumers navigate the maze of financial products available to them, which officially begins its operations today.

The CFPB, if it survives past birth in spite of the current efforts to slash its funding and oversight abilities, would be legacy enough — opening, as it does, a new front in the world of financial regulation; creating a new social contract between American consumers and their government, in which it's the government's role to make sure consumers can understand what they're getting into with a mortgage or a new credit card; you get the idea. Warren, who, we recently learned, will not be leading the agency she championed, has established more than just the agency's mission — she spearheaded the creation of a federal regulatory body with a strikingly new approach to its work. And that method will be just as important to watch as it evolves.

Take the newly launched credit-card complaint form on CFPB's website, which went up last night. While the interface is basic, it has the kind of user-experience thoughtfulness behind it that's already powered the way CFPB built new mortgage disclosure forms. Using it feels more like renting a Zipcar than interacting with a government agency. Opposite that on the homepage is another simply asking for visitors' stories about consumer financial products, something that's little more than an elaborate contact form. But it's a very pretty contact form.

It's worth noting that the CFPB is not the only place where this kind of thought — if something need not be complex, let it be stone-simple — has appeared in government. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office has a similarly open-ended call for stories about how government has interfered with visitors' businesses. Cantor's new media director, Matt Lira, told me that it was basic because it didn't need to be complex — and that stories submitted through that form were already powering arguments delivered on the House floor. The same mentality seems to be afoot at CFPB, and observers are taking notice.

All of this speaks to a marriage of intent with implementation at the new agency, apparently by Warren's design, that my old colleague Nancy Scola summed up well in a July 19 piece for The Atlantic:

She's been eager to imprint on the agency a set of practices that are longer lasting. "The sorry history of regulatory capture is something I've paid close attention to," she says. It's what keeps her at work nights and weekends. Transparency, she says, is more than a buzzword. She's put her calendar online, made the agency's agenda public, brought in an online director from the Motley Fool to launch an agency website up to industry standards, and worked to engage a broad circle of voices. (The CFPB, for example, innovatively posted competing versions of redesigned mortgage forms and asked consumers, bankers, and advocates to critique which line should go where and the like.)

The CFPB is, in many ways, about information management — the ability to acquire, sort, explain, and convey complex information to people who don't have the time to absorb it. So perhaps it's fitting that so much of the agency's emphasis so far online has been in user interface and usability, in making it an easier and quicker task to peek behind the curtain of everything from a new mortgage to the inner workings of the CFPB itself. The agency's implications are far more broad, of course, and its establishment likened in impact to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's unclear if, when the dust has settled around the confirmation of a CFPB director and the laws establishing its authority, the funding and mandate will be there for the CFPB to continue along the tack it has taken so far.

For now, though, what it has is a unique approach. As the second major fiscal watchdog body created in the 21st century — following the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — it has some lessons learned to incorporate into the way it interacts with the public and with the firms it regulates. And starting today, it will put that approach to the test.