On February 28, 2019, AFR Senior Fellow Heather Slavkin Corzo offered testimony at a hearing entitled “Legislative Proposals on Capital Formation and Corporate Governance,” before the Senate Banking Committee. Read or download a PDF version of the testimony by following this link.
Letter from 80 groups opposing the CFPB’s changes to its no-action letter policy and new sandbox proposal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Feb. 6, 2019 CONTACT: Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org, (202) 251-6700 Kraninger Allows Payday Lenders To Drive Policy With Proposed Rulemaking Statement From Linda Jun, senior policy counsel of Americans for Financial Reform: “In proposing to undo the rule against abuses in payday and car title
Given the evidence that, after being provided a summary relationship disclosure, investors still cannot fully understand, and in some cases misunderstand, fundamental differences in the nature of the brokerage and advisory relationships and the respective duties they are owed, the different fees they would pay, or how various conflicts of interest can influence the recommendations they receive, a regulatory regime that relies on disclosure for investors to make an informed decision about what type of financial professional to work with and what type of account to use is certain to fail.
On November 19, 2018, AFR and 35 organizations sent a joint letter to the OCC urging the agency not to weaken the Community Reinvestment Act.
The CFPB is exceeding its authority under the law that created the agency and would set a dangerous precedent with its “disclosure sandbox” policy, its label for granting companies exemptions from disclosure rules. The CFPB would allow firms to obfuscate or eliminate important information in the name of “financial innovation,” a label often applied to defend practices in mortgage lending that led to the 2008 crisis.
“A coalition of 50 public interest groups today sharply criticized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposal to gut important consumer-protection rules, especially for fintech companies, arguing the agency does not have the authority to create potentially unlimited exemptions from the very regulations that the CFPB is obligated to enforce.”
We, the undersigned organizations, call on you to abandon your proposed reorganization of the
Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity, and to remove Mr. Eric Blankenstein from having
any involvement in the Bureau’s oversight and enforcement of antidiscrimination laws. We have
long voiced strong concerns about your plans to relocate the Office of Fair Lending, and our
concerns have grown even stronger in light of the shocking revelations about Mr. Blankenstein’s
writings on issues of race.
One year ago, Equifax announced the worst data breach in U.S. history, a breach that compromised the personal information of over 150 million consumers. Even though it has been a year since the breach, Equifax still has not paid any price for putting so many