The Trump administration has ordered the CFPB to stop its work. What does the agency do?

The new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered its employees on Monday to stay out of the office and stop all work. Meanwhile, a union representing federal employees filed two lawsuits: One challenges the administration’s decision to shut down the bureau, and the other seeks to limit access to records by Elon Musk’s government efficiency office.

But why was the CFPB created in the first place? And what has it done over its nearly 14-year existence?

In the lead-up to the Great Recession, there were a lot of companies offering risky mortgages and loans, according to Lauren Saunders, associate director at the National Consumer Law Center.

“Pick-a-payment loans and exploding interest rate loans that were not affordable and that were doomed to fail,” she said.

It was in that context that Congress created the CFPB in 2010. Before that, regulation of consumer financial products was scattered across different parts of the government. This put it all in one place, per Andrew Metrick, the Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management at the Yale School of Management and the director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability.

“It’s centralizing and narrowing, right?” he said. “Clear mandate, and then one place where that mandate is enforced.”

The CFPB gets its funding from the Federal Reserve — not Congress. That’s made it a more “muscular” regulatory body, Metrick said. But “the muscles of this agency, you know, directly impinged upon very, very powerful interest groups.” As a result, it’s come under attack for years.

Meanwhile, it’s returned over $21 billion to consumers. The Bureau has also changed the rules for banks, lenders and credit agencies, said Lindsay Owens, executive director at think tank the Groundwork Collaborative.

For example, “to make sure that medical debt wasn’t counted against you on your credit history or credit score,” she said.

Now, the Trump administration may turn back the clock to 2010, but Owens said the need for consumer protection isn’t going away.