AFR and 24 partners sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee opposing the FIRM Act. The bill purports to curb banking discrimination and enable equal opportunity to obtain financial services. But it would do nothing to prevent actual discrimination or improve access to financial services for people in protected classes.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) appreciates the opportunity to provide written testimony on the role of private equity in the health care sector and the appropriate approaches to curb its monopolistic and predatory practices in the sector. Private equity investments in healthcare facilities and networks lower quality and accessible care.
Americans for Financial Reform along with 17 housing, consumer, civil rights, and labor organizations sent a letter urging the Senate Banking Committee to oppose the nomination of Bill Pulte to serve as Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Mr. Pulte’s residential rental real estate investments and private equity background make him uniquely unsuited to lead the FHFA.
Americans for Financial Reform along with 23 consumer, civil rights, community, labor, faith-based, small business, farm, and other organizations sent a letter urging the Senate Banking Committee to oppose the nomination of Jonathan McKernan to serve as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB’s Director should preserve the Bureau’s integrity, capacity, and independence and stand up against capricious and unlawful efforts to defund, dismantle, or diminish the agency. Jonathan McKernan fails to meet these standards.
Small businesses and farms are engines for economic growth and household wealth building, but historic inequitable access to credit and financing makes it more difficult for businesses and farms owned by people of color and women to sustain, reinvest, and expand their businesses. Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires the CFPB to collect data essential to identify lending discrimination and gaps in access to credit, provide market transparency, and address community credit needs for small businesses and farms. Efforts to repeal, weaken, or undermine Section 1071’s reporting requirements will hurt small businesses and farms, undermine household wealth building, and hurt overall economic growth.
What Now? Investors’ Role in Fighting Financial Deregulation By Meron Lemmi This presidential administration is poised to roll back financial regulations that protect long-term, diversified investors. Both public and private markets face a wave of deregulatory efforts that would weaken investor protections and undermine corporate
Congress must vote against legislative attacks on the CFPB, which must remain independent, with a single director and a secure mandatory funding stream. Congress must also protect CFPB rules including the fintech payment app rule, the overdraft fee rule, the medical debt rule, and small business and farm lending transparency rules.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) overdraft fee rule will discourage financial institutions from abusive and predatory overdraft practices, which often target servicemembers and military families. Banks charge overdraft fees for covering transactions that exceed account balances, but these charges can be illegally or unfairly applied and overdraft fee revenue has become a major profit center for some institutions.
AFR submitted a statement for the record hearing that challenges the notion of so-called de-banking, which is really a red herring to obscure the real risks from reckless speculation, egregious self-dealing, or illegal and harmful financial transactions by the companies that complain.
AFR submitted a Statement for the Record to the House Financial Services Committee to oppose both the resolution of disapproval of the CFPB’s overdraft fee rule as well as the legislative proposals that would repeal or weaken the small business and farm lending transparency rules. These proposals will hurt everyday people, including consumers and their families, as well as small business owners and farmers and the communities they serve.