Category Archives: Statements and Press Releases

News Release: AFREF and Partners Submit Comments On Labor Department Proposal to Allow Retirement Plans To Consider Sustainability, Jobs, Equity, Workers 

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) submitted comments to the Labor Department supporting a proposed rule that will allow and encourage private retirement plans and pensions to consider sustainability factors like climate change, workers’ rights, racial, economic and environmental justice, and corporate governance when investing and voting proxies.

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News Release: Americans for Financial Reform Welcomes the FDIC’s Action on Reviewing Bank Mergers

Americans for Financial Reform welcomes the FDIC’s action on reviewing bank mergers. In the last 15 years, the federal bank regulators have rubber-stamped merger applications. This has led to unprecedented consolidation in the industry which has hurt consumers and small businesses, in the form of bank deserts and decreased lending to small businesses while lining the pockets of the banking executives. We look forward to commenting on ways to strengthen the bank merger guidelines to protect the interest of the communities they are supposed to serve.

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sign for the CFPB outside a building

News Release: CFPB Overdraft Study is a Start but New Regulations Needed

We appreciate the work of the CFPB on drawing attention to the harms of overdraft fees, which take billions of dollars a year out of the pockets of mostly low- and moderate-income households to pad the bottom lines of the country’s big and small banks. And among those households, Black and Latinx households were also far more likely to incur overdrafts. We urge the CFPB to use all the tools that Congress gave it to protect consumers from abuses, including drafting tough new regulations.

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Statement: Leading the Pack, OCC Announces Climate Risk Guidance for Banks by Years End

Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) plans to develop climate risk supervisory expectations for large banks and issue guidance for comment by the end of the year. Over the past year, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and partners have urged the OCC and other banking regulators to take this important initial step immediately. We applaud Acting Comptroller Hsu for his leadership on this issue and we urge the other regulators to follow suit and issue guidance by the end of the year.

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lawyer signing a document Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

Statement: AFR Statement on President’s Working Group Report on Stablecoins

The Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund views the current state of the stablecoin market as a danger to consumers and to financial stability, and we are disappointed that the President’s Working Group (PWG) has focused on Congressional action as the central path for responding to these challenges.

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sunrise over a field of wind turbines

News Release: Treasury’s climate report light on specifics, regulators must go much farther, faster

The U.S. Treasury Department released its climate finance report on Thursday evening following a meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) where members voted to approve the report. Though strong in some areas like climate risk disclosure and scenario analysis, the report largely highlights agency actions that are already underway, and it fails to lay out a comprehensive roadmap with specific recommendations and timelines for regulators to consider beyond the assessment and disclosure of climate risk, Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) and Public Citizen said. 

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