The job running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) feels like a hot potato. It just keeps getting tossed from one person to the next.

Jonathan McKernan is expected to be nominated as director of the CFPB by the Trump administration. He will be the fourth director in just less than two weeks for the agency, which is one of the key regulators of the mortgage industry.

McKernan was previously a member of the board of directors for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). He resigned from the board this week, according to Banking Dive. McKernan is expected to be nominated as the permanent director.

“He brings a wealth of experience as a financial regulator, and we are confident he can make the fundamental changes to the CFPB that are needed to streamline regulation of smaller (independent mortgage banks), which is critical to supporting access to mortgage credit,” said Scott Olson, executive director of Community Home Lenders of America, in a statement.

The nomination may signal that the Trump administration ultimately intends to reform the CFPB rather than “deleting” it, said Peter Idziak, a senior associate with Polunsky Beitel Green, a law firm that specializes in mortgage lending, in a statement. The administration may have realized that simply hollowing out the CFPB would leave regulations crafted by the Biden administration in place to be enforced by states and the courts. 

In his time at the FDIC, McKernan advocated for regulatory clarity over regulatory overreach, often criticizing the agency for failing to make an evidence-based case for proposed rulemaking, Idziak said.

“Many within the industry are hopeful that his nomination signals that the bureau will look internally at how some of its policies and practices have increased costs for consumers and stifled innovation without any evidence the bureau’s actions protected consumers from financial harm,” Idziak said.

Rohit Chopra held the role of CFPB director from October 2021 until Feb. 1 when he was fired by President Donald Trump via email. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was named acting director of the CFPB, a role he held less than a week.

On Friday, Russell Vought, who had just been confirmed as the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, was named the next acting director. Vought is best known as being one of the architects of Project 2025, the controversial roadmap that conservatives put together to chart a course for a second Trump presidency.

By Monday, Vought had closed the headquarters of the CFPB and told its 2,000 workers to stay away from the office and do no work.

Reports came out Tuesday night that McKernan would be named the permanent director of the CFPB. McKernan had been on the FDIC board since January 2023. He previously served as counsel to Sen. Pat Toomey, R-PA, on the staff of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

He also has served as a senior counsel at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a senior policy adviser at the Department of the Treasury and a senior financial policy adviser to Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN.

The CFPB is one of the agencies that regulates the mortgage industry and has been active suing companies that have been accused of predatory practices and modern-day redlining.

Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump supporter, who has started an administration-sanctioned Department of Government Efficiency, and his team of programmers gained access to the CFPB website and social media pages last week.

The programmers took down the CFPB homepage — only a 404 error message appears on the link. The team deleted the CFPB’s X account and Musk posted on X on Friday afternoon, “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji.

Chopra took aim at the disarray of the CFPB in the past two weeks in an interview published Tuesday with The Hill. He said a lack of regulation invited the subprime crisis. And shuttering the agency could lead to another disaster.

“It just feels like shutting down the CFPB is begging for another financial crisis. … At the end of the day, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t enforce the laws on the books,” Chopra said.