Letter to Congress: Joint Letter Supporting URLA Legislation
AFR Language Access Task Force and partner organizations sent up a letter in support of legislation to restore the URLA language preference question.
Category Archives: Letters and Statements
News Release: The Students Not Profits Act will protect public dollars from abuses at for-profit colleges
Americans for Financial Reform welcomes the introduction of The Students Not Profits Act, let by Representative Pramila Jayapal, and Senators Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren. The for-profit college industry is plagued with bad outcomes for students, has a record of law breaking and abuse, and is responsible for 34% of student loan defaults, despite only enrolling 9% of post-secondary students. The Students Not Profits Act is a welcome and bold step to ensure that public dollars are not supporting and enabling malfeasance.
Letter to Regulators: Joint Letter to CFPB on Harmful Debt Collection Proposal
AFR Ed Fund and 230 consumer, civil and human rights, labor, community and legal services organizations from all 50 states and the District of Columbia submitted comment on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB or Bureau) proposed debt collection rules.
News Release: CFPB’s Proposed Debt Collection Rule Faces Strong Bipartisan Opposition
Strong majorities across parties oppose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) proposed debt collection rule including medical debt, according to a new poll released by Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). The poll was conducted by the bipartisan team of Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting.
News Release: CFPB to Approve Potentially Risky Fintech Products
CFPB finalizes policy that gives companies a private channel to seek approvals of untested new products and a promise that the CFPB will not take action for consumer protection law violations
Letters to Regulators: Joint Letter to the CFPB on Qualified Mortgages
On September 10, 2019, 17 civil rights, consumer and housing advocacy organizations sent a letter to the CFPB addressing QM and urging the Bureau to take additional steps to preserve access to affordable homeownership with adequate consumer protections in place.
Joint Statement: Nation’s Top Student Loan Watchdog Post Remains Vacant 150 Days After CFPB Director Promised to “Quickly” Fill the Role
Tomorrow marks one hundred fifty days since Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Kathy Kraninger committed to quickly filling the nation’s top student loan watchdog position—a role that has been vacant for almost a year. As student debt nears $1.6 trillion and predatory practices plague the market, the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) are releasing a roundup of failures by the current CFPB Director to stand up for student loan borrowers.
Statement: Income-share agreements are just student debt with a fancy name
“Income-share agreements are nothing more than student debt with a fancy name,” said Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. “Financial investors hungry for yield are using ISAs to put student debt in an elaborate and confusing package, while forcing students to waive key rights and seeking to withhold the already too limited consumer protections federal student loans provide.”
Letters to Congress: Statement to House Financial Services Committee on Facebook Libra Proposal
The AFR Education Fund sent a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Committee concerning Facebook’s proposal for the Libra digital token and payment system. The statement describes ways in which Facebook is attempting to create an unregulated financial product of potentially global scale and the dangers this would pose to the users of the token and the broader financial system.
News Release: Groups Sign Stock Buyback Petition
“The money that is being siphoned off from earnings to increase executive bonuses doesn’t just make wealthy insiders wealthier,” said Heather Slavkin Corzo, senior fellow at Americans for Financial Reform. “It is money that could have been used to invest in making the business more competitive and pay workers living wages.”