“Banks make it very hard for consumers to choose where they want to go if they’re not happy with services,” Elyse Hicks, a lawyer specializing in consumer policy at the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, told The Lever and The American Prospect.
AFR wrote in opposition to the premise of the House Ways and Means Committee hearing titled “Ensuring what ‘Woke’ Doesn’t Leave Americans Broke: Protecting Seniors and Savers from ESG Activism.” This hearing is part of a much broader, unpopular campaign against common sense investment practices that seeks to force financial actors to ignore a slew of financial risks to the detriment of workers’ retirement security.
View or download a PDF of the letter here. AFR and over 30 organizations wrote to House leadership in opposition to eight anti-ESG bills that were marked up by the House Financial Services Committee and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. These bills are part
Washington, D.C. – Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and 21 allied organizations submitted a letter urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to pass the strongest possible rule mandating minimum staffing standards for long-term care facilities (CMS–3442–P). The letter also highlights the role of private equity firms, which own 11% of US nursing homes, and their particularly harmful business practices, like understaffing, that detract from resident care.
Washington, D.C. – House Republicans are moving forward with a funding bill (H.R. 4664) that would undermine much-needed consumer protections, roll back hard-fought reforms of Wall Street, and hamper our country’s ability to address the financial risks from climate change.
Federal agencies should move swiftly to identify systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) for heightened scrutiny now that they have finalized a process for this designation process, according to Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) took an important initial step this week toward understanding how climate change is affecting homeowners insurers’ coverage and pricing decisions for consumers. Disappointingly, the notice of data collection was scaled back from earlier proposals, omitting queries critical to fully understanding the nature of the ongoing insurance crisis.
“Many risks in the nonbank sector, from insurance to private equity to hedge funds to asset management, are becoming increasingly serious and in need of closer attention,” said Alexa Philo, senior banking and systemic risk analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
Washington, D.C. – The following steering group members of the Save Our Retirement coalition – AARP, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Americans for Financial Reform, Better Markets, Center for American Progress, Consumer Federation of America, Economic Policy Institute, and Pension Rights Center – commended the public release of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposed rule to protect Americans from conflicts of interest when financial professionals give retirement investment advice:
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in support of its proposal to require public companies to disaggregate certain costs from expense captions, with a focus on the disaggregation of employee compensation costs. AFREF made a series of recommendations to improve these disclosures, including recommendations to include workers beyond employees in the disclosures.