Elizabeth Warren, the special White House adviser assigned to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has selected David Silberman of the Kessler Group to run the unit that will research and write rules for credit cards, according to two people involved in the decision.
Warren has said that among her top priorities is regulating credit-card disclosures, which would affect issuers including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.
Silberman manages the insurance business at the Boston-based consulting firm, according to the company’s website. Its clients include the Hartford Life & Accident Insurance Co., the Union Labor Life Insurance Co., and the AFL-CIO. He may be named to the post as early as today, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision isn’t public.
Before joining Kessler in 1999, Silberman was a co-founder of Union Privilege, the benefits arm of the AFL-CIO. He also served as the general counsel of Union Privilege for 12 years, then as its president and chief executive for five years.
As the general counsel of Union Privilege, Silberman negotiated the first agreements in the early 1990s with credit card issuers including HSBC Holdings Plc to create “affinity cards” for union members.
Affinity cards offer financial benefits to cardholders, such as discounts at certain stores, and funnel a fraction of each transaction to the union, said Leslie Tolf, the current president of Union Privilege. Currently about 1.5 million union members have the cards, she said.
‘Unique Skills’
Silberman “has a unique set of skills for the consumer and business,” Tolf said.
Silberman’s office in Boston did not return a call seeking comment.
Like everyone currently working with Warren, Silberman will technically be an employee of the Treasury Department until the bureau sets up its own human resources and computer system.
Warren said in an interview last week that her planned structure for the bureau would have separate units for each of the major areas of financial services, including credit cards, mortgages and student loans. She said each unit would perform its own research and rule-writing.
This structure, Warren said, can help avoid “capture,” the term that describes a regulator that falls under the sway of the industry it is supposed to oversee.
“An agency can be designed in a way to make capture more difficult, in part by making sure the people who know the markets best are writing the rules,” Warren said.
Other Appointments
Treasury today named Steven Antonakes, who is currently the Massachusetts commissioner of banks, to set up the bureau’s supervision program for the nation’s largest depository banks. Peggy Twohig, who has run the Treasury Department’s Office of Consumer Protection, will help set up supervision of non- depository financial companies, Treasury said.
“Peggy and Steve will play critical roles in building a CFPB that will level the playing field between bank and non-bank lenders,” Warren said in a statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Carter Dougherty in Washington at cdougherty6@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net.
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page