Compliance experts and industry advocates have been trying to project what might happen to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since President Trump was elected back in November.

Two developments arrived this week that perhaps might give auto finance companies and other service providers a bit more clarity.

First, U.S. Senator Deb Fischer, a Nebraska Republican, and two of her GOP colleagues from the upper chamber reintroduced legislation that would make changes to the structure of the CFPB, replacing the single director with a bipartisan board of directors comprised of five individuals.

Then multiple online reports appeared early Friday indicating Trump was set to sign another executive order; this time calling for a significant review of the Dodd-Frank Act with the aim of considerably scaling back the regulatory structure the legislation enacted.

The CFPB declined to comment about the reported Trump order when reached by SubPrime Auto Finance News on Friday morning. However, CFPB director Richard Cordray made a clear point about the bureau’s objective through his prepared remarks when the agency released its study on debt collection early last month.

“The Consumer Bureau has the authority and the duty to enforce the law to protect consumers, and we will not tolerate those who harm them by violating the law. Our work to ensure that all consumers are treated with dignity and fairness will continue,” Cordray said.

No matter that pledge, Fischer highlighted the changes her proposal — the Consumer Financial Protection Board Act — would bring, including:

— Each board member would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

— The president would appoint one of the five members of the board to serve as chairperson of the board.

— Board members would each serve staggered five-year terms, and no more than three members would be from the same political party.

— The legislation would take effect on the date on which not less than three persons have been confirmed by the Senate to serve as members of the board of directors.

Co-sponsors of the bill included Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

“For years, the bad decisions made by a single director at the CFPB have kept families locked out of economic opportunity,” Fischer said. “My bill would prevent this misconduct by divesting the authority from one director to a five-member bipartisan board.

“This much-needed structural adjustment would bring accountability to the bureau and give more Americans a chance to build their own businesses and provide for their families,” she continued.

This proposed measure is the sort of action experts predicted might happen; authorities who participated in a nearly hour-long panel discussion during last week’s Vehicle Finance Conference hosted by the American Financial Services Association. One of those experts was Frank Salinger, who now operates his own firm, Public Policy Law Practice, but also served with AFSA during the 1980s.

“When you think about it, for 236 years of our republic, people managed to make loans without the CFPB. Somehow it all functioned. Then this agency is created. What is the Republican answer? Let’s make it better. Let’s make it a commission, not abolishing it,” Salinger said.

At the start of the panel session, AFSA vice president Bill Himpler asked the audience about whether Cordray would remain through the end of his term that’s set expire next summer. Using electronic polling equipment, more than 80 percent of participants said Cordray would not finish his term.

Those results triggered a wide array of observations from another expert on the panel, Mark Calabria is director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato in 2009, he spent six years as a member of the senior professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

“I think there will be a push by this administration to replace Cordray,” Calabria said. “I would emphasize that this crowd might not have the anger toward Cordray that some others do. But almost to a person, everyone who works on financial policy in Washington really dislikes the guy.

“You could have someone put in that agency who could have made it a bipartisan, generally liked agency,” Calabria continued. “Cordray decided not to do that. He decided to be extremely partisan, and I think that’s kept the issue alive in a way that would not have been the case now.”

Calabria’s assessment of the feelings about Cordray went even further, suspecting that about a third of CFPB’s staff “would be happy to see Cordray go.”

If the CFPB remains under the controls of a single director, Calabria also has a hunch who the replacement would be — Randy Neugebauer, a former Texas Republican who was chairman of the U.S. Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee and chose not to run for reelection last year.

“There’s just too much for the president to do right now if he didn’t think this was a priority. The tea leaves say to me that Neugebauer will be the nominee, and we’ll hear his name within the next month,” Calabria said.

And what would happen to Cordray? Salinger addressed that question.

“We must remember that Cordray is a politician,” Salinger said recapping the director’s time as an elected state lawmaker and treasurer as well as time as attorney general in Ohio along with his failed attempts to secure spots in both the U.S. House and Senate.

“When he took the job, the conventional wisdom in Washington was he would be here and go back and run for governor,” Salinger continued. “But by the time the election came around, (current governor) John Kasich’s numbers were off the charts and he won in a landslide. So if Cordray wants to go back, he doesn’t have many options. If he wants to run for governor, that won’t be until 2018.”

So whether Cordray eventually is replaced with another single director or a five-member board, Calabria added one more assessment of what his CFPB legacy might be.

“A Republican could come in and be very aggressive,” Calabria said. “Because Cordray has decided he does not want to do this through the appropriate way through regulation, but just do it off the top of his head very discretionary, has left himself open to much of what he’s done simply being undone the next day.”