Americans for Financial Reform is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded when more than 200 civil rights, labor, consumer, community-based, faith, business, and other organizations came together to create an effective public interest voice on banking, finance and financialization. Formed in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, we convene and lead a set of interlocking coalitions that work to transform the financial system so that it serves an equitable and sustainable economy.
We believe that the financial system and our economy should work for the public good, and we fight the inequities and systemic racism that stand in the way of this goal. Our approach includes policy development and analysis, advocacy, coalition building, research, education, and driving grassroots and grasstops mobilization at the federal and state levels.
Americans for Financial Reform does not receive tax-deductible contributions. Our sister 501(c)(3) project, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, does receive tax-deductible contributions to support nonpartisan advocacy, education, and outreach. You can learn more about AFR’s Education Fund here.
Our Vision
A world where the rules that govern the economy center human needs and help all families and communities to flourish.
Our Mission
Transforming the financial system so that it serves an equitable and sustainable economy. We cannot build a more economically and racially just society without changing the rules that concentrate wealth, perpetuate the racial wealth gap, and leave too many people and communities behind.
Our History
The 2008 financial crisis devastated families and communities, deepened inequality, and cost the United States tens of trillions of dollars in lost output, jobs, homes, and household wealth.
This catastrophe was a result of allowing Wall Street and big banks to write the rules of finance for themselves, and ignoring protections for consumers, investors, and financial stability. In an effort to prevent recklessness and greed from wreaking havoc again, and to build a fairer and more resilient financial system, more than 200 groups representing an array of public interests came together to create Americans for Financial Reform.
AFR’s first major success was a far-reaching one. It led the public education, mobilization, policy analysis, and people-powered lobbying campaign that strengthened and passed the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the most significant regulation of finance since the New Deal.
This included the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has made the financial industry return more than $21 billion in relief to more than 200 million customers harmed by the industry, and it has done this while writing rules and taking other actions that save people tens of billions of dollars more each year.
Since its critical work on Dodd-Frank, AFR has pushed for effective implementation of the law and for tough financial regulation in the face of fierce opposition by the financial industry and its allies in Congress and government agencies. We have shifted scores of financial rules to better protect the public, we have changed the expectations of what financial regulation in the public interest must do, we have exposed hidden ways that Wall Street is extracting wealth and increasing costs in housing and healthcare and more, and we have developed a bold agenda to take on Wall Street and corporate power and transform the role of finance in the economy as a key part of advancing economic and racial justice.