New Policy Memo From Former CFPB Supervision Chief Outlines Path to Modernize State Oversight of Regulated Financial Firms

August 27, 2026 | WASHINGTON, D.C. — Protect Borrowers announced today a new roster of former state and federal attorneys that will support the expansion of work focused on state enforcement and state oversight. The organization also released a new roadmap for state financial regulators to modernize state oversight over financial firms, amid a pullback in federal oversight and the rapid integration of AI into the financial system.

Protect Borrowers welcomes Laura Dismore, former New York Assistant Attorney General; Lorelei Salas, former head of supervision at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection; Adam Teitelbaum, former Director of DC Attorney General’s Office of Consumer Protection; and Austin Hinkle, who held various legal and policy roles at the CFPB, the U.S. Treasury Department, and in the White House. Dismore will serve in a full-time staff role as Senior Counsel. Salas, Teitelbaum, and Hinkle will all serve as Senior Fellows.  

“As former government enforcers and regulators, Laura, Lorelei, Adam, and Austin each bring deep experience protecting American consumers in a rapidly changing economy,” said Protect Borrowers’ Legal Director Winston Berkman-Breen. “Each of them will be a valuable addition to Protect Borrowers’ work to help state and local offices protect working households.”

  • Laura Dismore will serve as senior counsel at Protect Borrowers. Previously, Laura was an Assistant Attorney General at the New York Attorney General’s Consumer Frauds Bureau, where she worked on student borrower protection, fraudulent entity dissolution, and arbitration. Prior to her time in government, she served as a tenants’ rights attorney at legal services organizations in NYC. 
  • Lorelei Salas will serve as a senior fellow at Protect Borrowers. Lorelei Salas was the Supervision Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until February 2025. Before her tenure at the CFPB, she led the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, the oldest consumer agency in the country, where she strengthened protections for immigrants, low-wage workers, and vulnerable communities. In 2010, Salas was nominated by President Obama to lead the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor. Her career includes decades of public service dedicated to enforcing labor standards, combating financial exploitation, and expanding economic opportunity.
  • Adam Teitelbaum will serve as a senior fellow at Protect Borrowers. Adam served as director of the Office of Consumer Protection in the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General, where he led and supervised hundreds of litigation and pre-suit investigation consumer protection matters. Under Adam’s leadership, the Office of Consumer Protection pursued matters spanning data privacy, deceptive fees and pricing, dark patterns, predatory marketing and lending practices, and other consumer fraud actions. Before joining the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General, Adam served as a deputy city attorney in Los Angeles, where he led consumer fraud, data privacy, and wage theft actions, including a novel privacy case against IBM related to location tracking and a wage theft case that resulted in a record $1.6 million stipulated judgment with full restitution for workers. 
  •  Austin Hinkle will serve as a senior fellow at Protect Borrowers. Austin is the founder and managing partner at the Public Goods Practice (PGP), a boutique law firm dedicated to protecting borrowers and reshaping the broken system of higher education finance. Before launching PGP, he worked at the CFPB, the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of the Treasury, and the Obama White House, where he led efforts to uncover and address systemic failures in the student loan system and improve operations.

These additions build on the launch of Protect Borrowers’ strategic litigation project in 2025, which continues to be led by the team of senior attorneys who recently steered the CFPB’s enforcement division. 

Investigations and lawsuits driven by Protect Borrowers have delivered more than $1 billion in debt relief, returned hundreds of millions of dollars to borrowers, and won justice for teachers, healthcare workers, students, airline pilots, pet groomers, and millions of other working people across the country.

MODERNIZING STATE OVERSIGHT OF FINANCIAL COMPANIES

Supervision of financial service providers is a critical function typically performed by federal regulators, but with agencies like the CFPB on life support, states should step up, argues a new policy memo released today by Protect Borrowers. The memorandum, authored by Protect Borrowers senior fellow Lorelei Salas, urges state policymakers to create offices of supervision policy within their state financial regulators.

A copy of the memorandum is available here.

“States already have supervisory authority, and now is the time when they should be reassessing how to best deploy it on behalf of their residents,” said Protect Borrowers senior fellow and former CFPB Supervision Director Lorelei Salas. “Creating offices of supervision policy would help states ensure they are responsive to emerging and ongoing consumer risks.” 

All states have the authority to supervise banks and nonbank financial services companies operating within their jurisdictions. Whereas violations resulting in enforcement actions are typically public, when violations are discovered through supervision, companies are generally permitted to correct their errors, including providing compensation to harmed consumers, without a public announcement or lawsuit being filed. Core to states’ supervisory authority is the responsibility to ensure compliance with consumer protection laws. Although states typically conduct supervision through periodic, scheduled, in-person visits to companies to review their books and records, as the memorandum explains, supervision is a far more flexible authority that can be used to request industry data, issue guidance documents, and conduct market research or product testing.

The memorandum represents the latest in research and ideas from Protect Borrowers focused on increasing state and local capacity in light of the federal government’s abdication of its consumer protection responsibilities, and builds on work the organization has already done to pass new consumer protection laws and to support state attorneys general in enforcing those laws.

Further Reading

Press Release on Launch of Affordable NYC Project: Deputy Mayor Julie Su, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Councilmember Harvey Epstein Headline Policy Summit on Affordability in NYC, Hosted by Century Foundation & Protect Borrowers

Press Release Announcing Top CFPB Enforcement Leaders Project at Protect Borrowers: Former CFPB Enforcement Leaders Launch Strategic Litigation Project Hosted at Protect Borrowers

Press Release Announcing Media Availability of Top Former CFPB Officials: Former Heads of CFPB Enforcement and Supervision, Former CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman Available to Highlight Ongoing Risks to Consumers As CFPB Shutdown Enters Fourth Week

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About Protect Borrowers

Protect Borrowers (formerly Student Borrower Protection Center) is a nonprofit organization led by a team of experts, lawyers, and advocates fighting to build an economy where debt doesn’t limit opportunity. We investigate financial abuses, take predatory companies to court, and push for policies to protect working people from debt traps. We aim to deliver immediate relief to families while building power, driving systemic change, and fighting for racial and economic justice.

Learn more at protectborrowers.org or follow us on social @BorrowerJustice.