**NEW**Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)**
January 5, 2012: A Beginning--Today marks an important step forward for the CFPB as we work to protect consumers. Going forward, the CFPB will expand its bank supervision program (which began last July) to nonbanks, ensuring that banks and nonbanks play by the same rules.
There are currently thousands of nonbank businesses that offer consumer financial products and services, and consumers interact with them all the time. If you�ve taken out a payday loan, received a call from a debt collector, or accessed your credit report, you may well have done business with one yourself. These common transactions add up to a big part of the overall market for consumer financial products and services, and the importance of nonbanks has grown substantially over the last few decades.
While banks, thrifts, and credit unions historically have been examined by various federal regulators, nonbanks generally have not. Until today. By requiring the CFPB to examine nonbanks, the Dodd-Frank Act � the law that established t
