ROCHESTER, N.Y. — It’s a government agency that you may have never heard of, but it has a direct effect on your financial life. It’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And Sunday, workers got an email telling them to stay home.

The CFPB has long drawn the ire of the banking industry and some Republicans who say the agency is government overreach at its worst. Nevertheless, the actions of the CFPB have been very popular with Americans, no matter their political affiliation.

The CFPB was formed following the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. By in large, banks were blamed for that crisis. After all, banks funded the subprime mortgage industry which had a major meltdown, triggering the Great Recession.

Over the last 14 years, you can thank the agency for retrieving $21 billion in reimbursements and forgiving consumer debt. And while many may know little about the CFPB, its actions have been popular.

“So, we saw that with credit card late fees, they had proposed reducing the maximum late fee to eight dollars per instance,” said Matt Schulz, LeandingTree’s Chief Credit Analyst and author of Ask Questions, Save Money, Make More: How to take Control of your Financial Life.

Before that, the average late fee was $32. In a recent Pew Charitable Trusts poll 84 percent of respondents said regulators should force banks to reduce fees. But that new CFPB rule is now in limbo. Also in limbo, the new rules that ban reporting medical debt to credit agencies.

Asked who’s looking out for consumers in the absence of the CFPB, Schulz responded, “There’s an alphabet soup of regulators that are keeping an eye on what banks do.”

True. But keep in mind, that an alphabet soup of regulators was in place during the banking industry’s subprime lending crisis, a crisis that led to a $700 billion bank bailout funded by taxpayers. Congress created the CFPB because at the time it believed the financial industry needed another layer of oversight and consumers needed another layer of protection. Now the future of the agency is uncertain.

“The question from a consumer’s perspective is does that increase the odds that you start to see more unfair acts and practices on the part of financial providers, said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s Chief Financial Analyst. “The CFPB is not the only regulator but they do have the widest range of oversight, and taking away that one set of eyes, does that make a difference? That’s not something we’re going to know for quite some time.”

Just last month, the CFPB fined Equifax $15 million for failing to investigate consumers’ complaints about mistakes on their credit reports. So now the question is: will Equifax ever have to pay? That’s also up in the air. This week the CFPB headquarters is closed, and workers have been told to stay home.   The bureau’s new director and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought has put a freeze on all CFPB funding, funding that was approved by Congress.