Good news for payday lenders and the mortgage industry. Bad news for consumers.

The temporary head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced a new plan for the agency that seems to confirm the fears of consumer advocates.

“We have committed to fulfill the bureau’s statutory responsibilities, but go no further,” he said in the new five-year strategic plan he unveiled Monday. He said it “should serve as a bulwark against the misuse of our unparalleled powers.” Mulvaney, who is also the director of the Office of Management and Budget, and other Republicans have frequently said the CFPB is too powerful.

The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. It will continue to adhere to its mission as laid out by Dodd-Frank, Mulvaney said: It will “regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services under the Federal consumer financial laws” and “educate and empower consumers to make better informed financial decisions.”

But consumer advocates have worried since Mulvaney was appointed by President Donald Trump to take over the bureau that as director, he would favor companies over consumers. During its near seven-year history, the CFPB has taken on everything from the prepaid card industry to the mortgage servicing industry. (Richard Cordray, the previous head of the CFPB, was appointed during the Barack Obama administration.)

The latest plan shows Mulvaney “is clearly working from the outside and the inside to destroy the CFPB and cripple its ability to protect consumers from financial predators,” said Karl Frisch, the executive director of Allied Progress, a left-leaning consumer watchdog organization.

Latest evidence that the CFPB is losing its teeth

Mulvaney wrote in an op-ed published in January The Wall Street Journal that the bureau will no longer “push the envelope.” “When it comes to enforcement, we will focus on quantifiable and unavoidable harm to the consumer,” he wrote. “If we find that it exists, you can count on us to pursue the appropriate remedies vigorously. If it doesn’t, we won’t go looking for excuses to bring lawsuits.”

Mulvaney wrote that the bureau previously believed “we were the good guys and the financial-service industry was the bad guys,” but that will change, he said.

A database with hundreds of thousands of complaints is at risk

Consumer advocates are also concerned that the CFPB will get rid of the database of complaints related to current investigations, which allows the public to air complaints publicly. It also provided a direct way for the public to engage with the CFPB’s activities.

The database contains hundreds of thousands of complaints filed by consumers about issues ranging from predatory debt collectors to errors on credit reports. Republicans have argued that the database shouldn’t be public, while consumer advocates say the public list of complaints is an important tool for consumers.

A public database has been “a powerful mechanism for keeping financial predators accountable to consumers,” Melissa Stegman, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit based in Durham, N.C., told MarketWatch. “Pulling the complaints behind a cloak of secrecy would help let unscrupulous companies get away with mistreating consumers.”

Payday lenders targeting vulnerable borrowers may regain more power

Mulvaney announced in January the CFPB may reconsider a rule Cordray implemented for payday lenders that was designed to protect consumers and limit the amount lenders are allowed to loan them, if they do not meet certain borrowing criteria.

Dennis Shaul, the CEO of the Community Financial Services Association of America, a trade group that includes payday lenders, said he was pleased. “The bureau’s rule was crafted on a pre-determined, partisan agenda that failed to demonstrate consumer harm from small-dollar loans, ignored unbiased research and data, and relied on flawed information to support its rulemaking,” he said.

But that’s not good news for consumers, especially low-income households who often turn to payday lenders who have charged interest rates of up to 400%, Frisch said. “There is no reason to delay implementation of this rule — unless you are more concerned with the needs of payday lenders than you are with the interests of the consumers these financial bottom-feeders prey upon,” he told MarketWatch.

Still, the CFPB’s payday lending rules were complex, amounting to more than 1,000 pages, said Nick Clements, the co-founder of personal finance company MagnifyMoney, who previously worked in the credit industry. Although payday lenders can indeed cause borrowers financial distress, “I do think there are some fair criticisms of the CFPB in terms of excessive complexity,” he said.

Mulvaney requested zero dollars for his second-quarter budget

In January, Mulvaney requested zero dollars in his second-quarter budget request and said the agency has enough money for now.

The bureau already had $177 million in reserves, enough to cover the $145 million the bureau projected it would need during the second quarter, he said. “I see no practical reason for such a large reserve,” Mulvaney wrote in his “funds request” to the Federal Reserve, “since I am informed that the board has never denied a bureau request for funding and has always delivered requested funds in a timely fashion.”

But that request, some argue, could be a sign that the bureau is preparing to slow down. “This is the latest chapter in Mulvaney’s long campaign to undermine and completely dismantle the consumer bureau,” wrote Debbie Goldstein, the executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit based in Durham, N.C. She said requesting zero dollars “sent the message that its work of defending consumers is not worth a penny.”

Mulvaney and Cordray trade insults over the CFPB’s future

Cordray struck back against Mulvaney in January, saying on Twitter that the op-ed shows “more retreat … from current squatter leadership.”

“The fish rots from the head down,” he wrote.

Mulvaney’s op-ed and recent statements have alarmed some consumer advocates. “I don’t think anybody in their right mind would say they believe consumers need less protecting, and who really needs help is banks, predators and financial bad actors,” said Karl Frisch, the executive director of Allied Progress, a left-leaning consumer watchdog organization.

The new leadership has taken over at a time when consumers are struggling with credit-card, auto loan and student loan debt.

What has the CFPB actually done for you?

In January 2017, the CFPB sued Navient Corp., the largest servicer of federal and private student loans in the U.S., in connection with creating obstacles for borrowers to repay their debts. The attorneys general of Pennsylvania, Illinois and Washington have also sued Navient. (A spokeswoman for Navient said the cases are still pending and said no ruling has been made on the facts in any of those three states. She pointed to a lengthy company statement on the cases, which say that the allegations were unfounded.)

The agency fined Wells Fargo WFC, +0.08% $100 million in September 2016 for alleged illegal practices including opening as many as two million deposit and credit card accounts without customers’ knowledge. (Wells Fargo did not confirm or deny the charges but agreed to pay the fine and later fired more than 5,000 employees because of “improper sales practices.”) At the time, Republicans said the CFPB acted slowly on the Wells Fargo case.

Struggling to pay student debt? Here's what you need to know.

Why should you care about the change in direction?

In the few months since his November 2017 appointment, Mulvaney has already reversed some key actions taken by his predecessor, and yet many Americans may not have noticed. At least, not yet.

The CFPB has had some major wins against the financial services industry in recent years, but a majority of Americans appear to be unaware. More than 80% of people said they did not know enough about the CFPB to form an opinion of it, in a 2017 survey by the credit-card website CreditCards.com. (Since then, more people likely know about the CFPB because of recent controversies, Frisch said.)

But those same people indicated they would in theory support an agency like the CFPB, if they knew it existed. Some 80% of respondents in the CreditCards.com survey said they were in favor of having a federal government agency whose goal is to “protect consumers from unfair, deceptive or abusive practices and take action against companies who break the law.” The irony? That description CreditCards.com took from the CFPB’s mission statement, without naming the agency.

Under Trump, the CFPB wants to cut down on corporate red tape

The CFPB regarded as an “unencumbered rulemaking and rule writing,” Clements said. “I think you’ll see less, not more from the CFPB going forward.”

The logic: If companies are burdened by expensive investigations, they may have to pass their costs onto consumers through their products, said Joe Jacquot, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner, based in Jacksonville, Fla.

Specifically, Mulvaney may look closely at the definition of “abusive” and specify how the bureau and attorneys general should regulate companies, said Nick Gess, a principal at Morgan Lewis, a law firm based in Washington, D.C. “Despite what some argue, most institutions want to comply with the law.”

Currently, the CFPB can issue a “civil investigative demand” when it needs to gather information, but that investigative process can be costly for companies, Jacquot said. State attorneys general can also enforce those laws, which can create costly investigations in their home states.