“Few practices are as abusive, unfair, and deceptive as the widespread use of forced arbitration clauses in most consumer contracts, including credit cards, student loans, debt settlement, credit repair, auto financing, and payday loans. Forced arbitration funnels consumers into a private system set up by corporations to protect and hide harmful and unlawful corporate behavior.”
“While the [proposed] rules are generally strong, we offer several suggestions below for strengthening the rules and closing loopholes. In particular, the CFPB should ban all overdraft fees; apply credit card protections to all credit transferred to a linked prepaid card; and limit fees before account opening and beyond the first year. We also urge the CFPB to require prepaid card funds to be held in accounts protected by deposit insurance and to adopt stronger rules to prevent coercive use of payroll, public benefit, student, released prisoner and other prepaid cards.”
AFR submitted comments to the CFPB on the agency’s proposed amendments to its mortgage servicing regulations. AFR appreciates the CFPB’s attention to dealing with continuing problems facing borrowers seeking loan modifications, supports proposed steps to address them, and urges further changes to do so more effectively.
AFR and five other consumer advocacy organizations, sent a letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White detailing key investor protections that the SEC has failed to take, and urging Chair White to act on them.
AFR and 9 other organizations sent a letter to Chair Mary Jo White expressing concern over the exclusion of Professor Joseph Stiglitz from the SEC Market Structure Advisory Committee. The letter urges the SEC to reconsider, or to provide more detail regarding how it arrived to its decision.
“As organizations that support strengthening protections for retirement savers, we write to thank you for sending a proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to update and close loopholes in the 40-year-old rules that apply when individuals receive professional advice about retirement investments. Updating protections for retirement savers is urgently needed and long overdue.”
The Institute on Agriculture and Trade Policy and Americans for Financial Reform submitted a joint comment on position limits for commodities to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Download the letter here.
Don’t open the floodgates to a wave of “wrong number” calls to cell phones, say AFR, NCLC and more than 75 national and state groups in a letter urging the FCC to stand by the safeguards of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
“Supervision of nonbank auto financial institutions will bring much-needed attention to otherwise
lightly-regulated companies, will ensure compliance with consumer financial laws, and will
ensure that auto financing by banks, already subject to CFPB supervision, is not at a competitive
disadvantage.”