On July 21, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau turned five years old. In a joint statement, AFR and 25 allied organizations celebrated the bureau’s accomplishments. The AFR coalition also marked the occasion by hosting a breakfast event at the downtown Washington offices of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

The event featured a short video with Senator Elizabeth Warren recalling the fight to create the CFPB and celebrating its accomplishments, and an Oprah-style Q-and-A session with Lisa Donner of AFR and Ed Mierzwinkski of US PIRG posing questions about arbitration, debt collection, mortgage servicing, and the CFPB complaint system, among other issues, to CFPB Director Richard Cordray. A number of news stories that birthday week cited a new bipartisan poll, jointly commissioned by AFR and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). The poll (see below) demonstrated overwhelming popular support for strong regulation of financial products and services in general, and for the mission and work of the CFPB in particular.