Banking and Finance Law Daily Wrap Up, LOANS—Warren, Sanders press CFPB ombudsman on plans for student borrowers, (Apr 29, 2026)

By Nora Macaluso

The senators said they’re concerned Geoffrey Gradler will favor private lenders and servicers at borrowers’ expense.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter to Geoffrey Gradler, the ombudsman for student loans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, asking him how he plans to protect student borrowers. “We are concerned that you will follow the Trump administration’s consistent playbook on private student loans: implementing policy after policy that benefits private lenders and their servicers at the expense of borrowers,” wrote Warren, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Sanders, ranking member on the chamber’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee.

The senators also asked Gradler, a former lobbyist representing financial services companies, to recuse himself from past clients’ matters that might come before his office. “The Trump administration has attempted to shut down the CFPB entirely, deprioritized supervision and enforcement actions related to student loan issues, and stopped major enforcement actions against companies accused of using illegal student loan debt collection practices,” the senators said. The administration and Congress “also limited graduate student and parent borrowers’ access to federal student loans, forcing working families to turn to private loans, which have fewer consumer protections than federal loans,” they added. “You have given no assurances that you will break this pattern and use your new role to protect borrowers from predatory private lenders,” the lawmakers wrote to Gradler.

The senators also took issue with the CFPB’s handling of a mandated student loan ombudsman report evaluating the office’s effectiveness and providing policy recommendations. “In October 2025, CFPB leadership— which included Gradler at the time — blocked the release of the legally-mandated annual Student Loan Ombudsman report, which evaluates the office’s effectiveness at protecting borrowers and provides policy recommendations on the student loan system,” they said. “Months later, the CFPB released a shorter version of the report, co-authored by Gradler, cutting data on which private lenders and servicers were most often the subject of complaints.”

“Your role in this disturbing episode of censorship suggests that you may be reluctant to fulfill your statutory duties when doing so would entail acknowledging private lender misconduct,” they told Gradler in their letter, “raising concern about your ability to hold these companies accountable for anti-consumer behavior or even provide useful information to policymakers and advocates.”

“We are concerned that you may be more inclined to protect the profits of private student loan lenders and loan servicers than fight on behalf of borrowers who are abused by these companies,” they wrote.

The letter included a list of questions about Gradler’s views on student loan policies and his role in “censoring” the annual report.

LegislativeActivity: CFPB Loans OversightInvestigations