Meet Richard Cordray, Your New Consumer Champion

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — It’s been an eventful week for Richard Cordray, the former Ohio attorney general who was finally appointed to be the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after a long, drawn out fight in Congress. Somehow though, he still found time to make a video to formally introduce himself to consumers and ask them to help the agency succeed.

“Consumers deserve to have someone who will stand on their side, who will protect them against fraud, and who will ensure they are treated fairly,” Cordray says of the CFPB in the video. “By working every day to protect consumers, we will help to fashion a more resilient economy and a stronger country. Join us, work with us, help us make it so.“

Cordray urges consumers to submit stories of their own financial hardships to the CFPB’s website so that the agency can be better informed about what needs to be improved. The agency has already taken some of this feedback into account to introduce more consumer-friendly mortgage forms and credit card agreements.

Cordray’s video effectively serves two purposes: to remind consumers about the mission and potential for the new agency, and to give viewers a chance to compare him to Elizabeth Warren, the outspoken architect of the new agency and the woman who is arguably still more commonly associated with it.