Kathleen Kraninger, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) under President Donald Trump, has been appointed to an executive position at Solidus Labs, a cryptocurrency-focused company with operations in crypto-native risk monitoring, market surveillance and fraud-prevention according to a company announcement.
Kraninger comes to the position having served as Former President Trump’s CFPB director from late 2018 until January 20, 2021, when she resigned from her post at the request of newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden. Since Kraninger’s departure, the CFPB has been headed by Acting Director Dave Uejio, while President Biden’s full-time nominee Rohit Chopra awaits Senate confirmation for his position.
In her new position in the private sector, Kraninger will oversee Solidus Labs’ regulatory strategy while working to build a team across the planet as governments “increasingly assess digital asset markets, demanding higher investor protection standards and introducing regulatory frameworks that require advanced risk monitoring and market surveillance capabilities,” the announcement of her appointment said.
“I am excited to join Solidus Labs as we seek to advance market integrity and responsible innovation in the world of DeFi and crypto, which are truly changing the way we engage in the financial marketplace,” said Kraninger in a statement. “Solidus brings essential crypto-native risk monitoring and fraud prevention capabilities that meet the needs of responsible industry players and regulators, and can help facilitate the next generation of markets.”
Kraninger was initially sworn in for a five-year term as CFPB director, but the way for her resignation was paved by a United States Supreme Court decision one year ago which allowed the president to dismiss the agency’s director at-will. The Donald Trump administration supported the president’s authority to dismiss the director, as did Kraninger herself, citing the prerogative of the president to “appoint senior officials within the government who support the President’s policy priorities, which ensures our government is responsive to the will of the people as expressed in presidential elections,” Kraninger wrote in her resignation letter.
Recently, the Biden administration has seized on the new authority granted to the presidency by the Supreme Court by also using that precedent to oust former Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Mark Calabria, and appears to be doing the same for the director of the Social Security Administration (SSA) according to reporting at the New York Times.
Kraninger ended her tenure as CFPB Director having overseen a demonstrable change in the agency’s regulatory posture when compared to her Obama-era predecessors, though she also took a more active hand in enforcement actions than did her immediate predecessor Mick Mulvaney.
The CFPB maintains regulatory enforcement authority over the reverse mortgage industry at the national level.
