AFR sent a letter urging the Biden Administration to take a faster pace in filling key regulatory and financial policy positions. The letter calls out how the Administration’s slow pace in these appointments has undermined its racial justice and climate change agendas.
AFREF and 22 organizations submitted comments in response to the regulators’ Request for Information and Comment on Financial Institutions’ Use of Artificial Intelligence, including Machine Learning, urging the financial regulators to consider fair lending risks of using artificial intelligence and machine learning and enact safeguards to prevent disproportionate adverse impacts from the use of AI/ML models.
AFR joined a letter calling on President Biden to extend the pause on student loan payments until the
Administration has delivered on its promises made to student loan borrowers to fix the broken
student loan system and cancel federal student debt.
AFR joined over 100 groups in sending a letter urging the Biden administration to ensure that any zoning reform incentives or requirements actually do the job of opening up exclusionary areas to more economic and racial diversity; do not further the displacement of low-income communities and communities of color, do not result in the loss of affordable housing, and do not further entrench profit-driven commodification of housing. Federal action to eliminate exclusionary zoning has the potential to expand racial and economic justice, but, if not crafted carefully, the effort could be ineffective or even harmful to communities of color.
AFREF, NCLC, NFHA and NHLP sent a letter to the CFPB, FRB, FDIC, OCC, NCUA and CSBS asking the agencies to update the April 3, 2020 Joint Statement on Supervisory and Enforcement Practices Regarding the Mortgage Servicing Rules in Response to the COVID-19 Emergency and the CARES Act to restore key supervisory and enforcement tools to incentivize servicers to properly handle applications for loss mitigation assistance and require servicers to send loss mitigation notices to borrowers, which are especially critical as forbearances come to an end in the coming months.
AFREF joined our partners in a letter urging the House to pass the Comprehensive Debt Collection Improvement Act to protect vulnerable consumers from abusive debt collection practices.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund wrote the Fed to express concerns over the blow-up of the Archegos family fund. This incident reveals both the dangers of excessive leverage at private funds, and the failure of banking regulators, including the Federal Reserve, to properly regulate bank interactions with such funds. To address these issues, the Federal Reserve must investigate its own regulatory failures in this case and publicly disclose the lessons learned from this investigation, and must also work with the Financial Stability Oversight Council to address the risks of excessive leverage at private funds.
AFREF joined a letter to the Department of Labor detailing ways to improve protections for retail investors.
AFREF joined a letter to the CFPB requesting they prohibit credit reporting of rent arrears incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic
In February, a letter sent to the House Financial Services Committee by the progressive non-profit Americans for Financial Reform called on Congress to expand the blank-cheque company definition and amend securities law to exclude SPAC mergers from liability protections. “As long as there’s money to be made in every part of the SPAC issuance process, I don’t expect to see changes unless you start to see some more scrutiny,” says Andrew Park, senior policy analyst at AFR.