Americans for Financial Reform

News Release: Public Interest Groups Urge Strong Staffing Standards for Nursing Homes

Washington, D.C. – Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and 21 allied organizations submitted a letter urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to pass the strongest possible rule mandating minimum staffing standards for long-term care facilities (CMS–3442–P). The letter also highlights the role of private equity firms, which own 11% of US nursing homes, and their particularly harmful business practices, like understaffing, that detract from resident care.

News Release: House Funding Bill Would Undermine Consumer Protections and Benefit Corporations

Washington, D.C. – House Republicans are moving forward with a funding bill (H.R. 4664) that would undermine much-needed consumer protections, roll back hard-fought reforms of Wall Street, and hamper our country’s ability to address the financial risks from climate change.

the outside exterior of the U.S. Treasury Department building

News Release: Regulators Should Swiftly Use New Guidance to Designate Risky Non-Banks

Federal agencies should move swiftly to identify systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) for heightened scrutiny now that they have finalized a process for this designation process, according to Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.

News Release: More Rigorous Data Needed To Understand the Impact of Insurers’ Climate Decisions on Consumers

Treasury’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) took an important initial step this week toward understanding how climate change is affecting homeowners insurers’ coverage and pricing decisions for consumers. Disappointingly, the notice of data collection was scaled back from earlier proposals, omitting queries critical to fully understanding the nature of the ongoing insurance crisis.

In The News: Yellen puts tougher policing of big financial firms back on the menu (Politico Pro)

“Many risks in the nonbank sector, from insurance to private equity to hedge funds to asset management, are becoming increasingly serious and in need of closer attention,” said Alexa Philo, senior banking and systemic risk analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.

News Release: Save our Retirement Coalition Groups Applauds Public Release of Dept. of Labor’s Proposal to Protect Americans’ Retirement Savings

Washington, D.C. – The following steering group members of the Save Our Retirement coalition – AARP, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Americans for Financial Reform, Better Markets, Center for American Progress, Consumer Federation of America, Economic Policy Institute, and Pension Rights Center – commended the public release of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposed rule to protect Americans from conflicts of interest when financial professionals give retirement investment advice:

Letters to the Regulators: Letter in Support of the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Expense Disaggregation Proposal

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in support of its proposal to require public companies to disaggregate certain costs from expense captions, with a focus on the disaggregation of employee compensation costs. AFREF made a series of recommendations to improve these disclosures, including recommendations to include workers beyond employees in the disclosures.

In The News: Climate Activists Want SEC to Copy California, Europe (The Wall Street Journal)

The Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform said Thursday that after analyzing the California law and state records, they believe that 75% of Fortune 1000 companies will have to make emissions disclosures once California’s requirements take effect later this decade.

News Release: California’s New Climate Disclosure Laws Cover Nearly Three-Quarters of Fortune 1000 Companies

WASHINGTON, DC – There should be no added compliance costs for 75% of the largest public companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions under the upcoming Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) climate financial risk disclosure rules, a new report has found. The findings cast doubt on U.S. business groups’ claims that the costs of fully disclosing their climate risks would be too high.

News Release: Banking Regulators Issue Final Climate Risk Management Principles for Large Banks

Washington, D.C. — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today released joint Principles for Climate-related Financial Risk Management for Large Financial Institutions that establish climate-related risk management expectations for banks with over $100 billion in assets.