The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) seeks comment on a Voluntary Carbon Markets Discussion Paper issued to advance the discussion about what sound and efficient Voluntary Carbon Markets should look like and what role financial regulators may play in promoting integrity in those markets. Americans for Financial
AFREF joined a letter to the Dept. of Education applauding the Department for the significant positive impact its proposed changes to the IDR rules could have on student loan borrowers. The proposed rule has the ability to substantially reduce monthly and lifetime payments for millions of borrowers, raise the threshold for protected non-discretionary income, lower the share of discretionary income borrowers have to pay, waive unpaid interest, and decrease time to cancellation.
We are writing on behalf of Public Citizen, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, and Sierra Club to supplement the information provided in previous comments we submitted. The purpose of this letter is to highlight a number of recent developments that further strengthen the rationale for the proposed rule.
As explained in our attached summary of developments related to climate-related financial risk, dramatic changes ushered in by the Inflation Reduction Act, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and global market trends more generally, are accelerating a rapid transformation in the investment landscape.
AFREF and partners led a letter to the FTC urging it to use its rulemaking authority to protect American consumers from junk fees and put money back into our pockets. Millions of consumers have expressed outrage at the imposition of service fees for live event tickets, “amenity” or “resort” fees charged by hotels, endless surprise rental car fees, hidden internet and cell phone charges, junk fees in the financial sector, and more. The federal government has taken a holistic approach to this problem, including the White House Competition Council, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Department of Transportation (DOT) and now the FTC.
AFREF joined a letter to the White House Task Force on New Americans Financial Access and Education Subcommittee urging them to incorporate policies that would explicitly expand language access within the financial services sector.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF) submitted letters to the Federal Reserve Board on its recent climate guidance for large banks. A coalition letter signed by 24 organizations urged the Fed to include enhanced safeguards and monitoring around fair lending violations, racial and economic
The nation’s big-bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, should help broaden and extend a crackdown on financial institutions that repeatedly violate the law – notably Wells Fargo – with all the tools at its disposal. Comptroller Michael Hsu is speaking on the problem of “too big to manage” today. The speech comes about a month after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Wells to pay $3.7 billion over widespread mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts, and promised to work with other federal regulators to find durable solutions to its constant violations of the law.
AFREF submitted a comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 27th supporting its proposals that would centrally clear the $27 trillion U.S. Treasury market, one of the largest and most systemically important markets in the world.
Shockingly, despite the Treasury market’s importance, no one regulator has complete visibility into this market and the SEC’s proposals move closer to implementing the Inter-Agency Working Group on Treasury Market Surveillance’s (IAWG) recommendations to give regulators such as the SEC and the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) greater visibility and oversight.
AFREF led comments to the Federal Insurance Office in support of their proposed “Climate-Related Financial Risk Data Collection” from insurers. AFREF supports this data collection because the increasingly prevalent and severe weather hazards caused by climate change pose a massive threat to the housing stability, affordability, and safety of Americans nationwide. Purchasing insurance policies is one of the few actions individuals can take to protect their property from the effects of climate-driven natural disasters. Therefore, the cost and availability of insurance is deeply related to a household’s monthly housing costs and their ability to recover from damages following severe weather.
AFREF joined partners in submitting comments to the CFPB in response to their initiative to enhance public data on auto lending.