Fact Sheets Archives - Americans for Financial Reform

Fact Sheet: AFR Fact Sheet to Defend CFPB 1071 Small Business & Farm Lending Transparency Rule

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.

Fact Sheet: AFR Factsheet on Legislative Attacks on the CFPB

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.

Fact Sheet: AFREF Factsheet on CFPB Overdraft Rule Benefitting Servicemembers and Military Families

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.

Fact Sheet: AFREF Coalition Fact Sheet on CFPB Larger Participants Rule

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has finalized a rule allowing it to supervise larger nonbank companies that offer services like digital wallets and payment apps, also known as peer-to-peer or P2P apps. Supervision of these companies will make sure they comply with the law and do not facilitate fraud. Banks are already supervised for these same reasons, and this rule will level the playing field to make sure all payments are safe, whether offered by a bank or a nonbank company.

Fact Sheet: AFREF Coalition Fact Sheet on CFPB Overdraft Rule

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) new overdraft fee rule closes a paper-check era loophole that has promoted abusive practices and allowed the biggest banks to earn billions in profits off of the most vulnerable families. The rule will help everyone, but especially families that are struggling with high prices and making ends meet.

Fact Sheet: AFREF Coalition Fact Sheet on CFPB 1033 Open Banking Rule

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Personal Financial Data Rights Rule (Rule 1033) helps create a more consumer-friendly and competitive financial services marketplace by allowing people to easily and securely move their personal financial data between financial institutions. Prior to this rule, many banks and financial institutions limited how consumers could use their financial data, which made it difficult for people to comparison shop, manage money, use new technology, or switch accounts and service providers. With Rule 1033, people who wish to switch financial service providers can share their banking history and data from previous transactions in a secure manner, helping them more easily move between service providers.

Fact Sheet: AFREF Coalition Fact Sheet on CFPB Medical Debt Rule

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) final rule to remove medical bills from most credit reports will prohibit credit reporting companies like Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian from sharing medical debt information with lenders as well as barring lenders from considering these medical debts in underwriting decisions.

Fact Sheet: AFREF Coalition Fact Sheet on CFPB Protecting People and Families

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created after the devastating 2008 financial crisis, exemplifies the government working for the people by vigorously protecting consumers and their families, including by reducing junk fees and holding corporations and financial institutions accountable when they engage in unfair and illegal conduct. Since its creation, the CFPB has stood up for the little guy against Wall Street, predatory lenders, and other financial services companies, by cracking down on junk fees, reducing the burdens of medical debt, fighting lending discrimination, and promoting banking competition, all while returning billions of dollars back into the pockets of everyday people.

Fact Sheet: The CFPB’s Medical Debt Rule Will Help 15 Million People

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) final rule to remove medical bills from most credit reports will prohibit credit reporting companies like Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian from sharing medical debt information with lenders as well as barring lenders from considering these medical debts in underwriting decisions.

Fact Sheet: Proposed Capital One-Discover Merger Fails to Meet Bank Merger Act Requirements

The proposed acquisition of Discover by Capital One would create the sixth-largest bank in the United States, with $624 billion in domestic assets. This transaction fails to meet the public interest conditions under the Bank Merger Act that directs banking regulators to reject mergers, like the Capital One-Discover transaction, that fail to further the convenience and needs of communities.