No Thumbnail

AFR-CFA Comment Letter: Business Conduct Standards

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed business conduct rules for security-based swap dealers and major security-based participants that AFR and CFA have said will not be effective in ending abusive practices and do not do enough to bring transparency to this market. Of particular concern are serious shortcomings in the provisions designed to provide enhanced protections for special entities, such as municipalities and pension funds, shortcomings that all but guarantee the rules will not deliver the intended enhanced protections. In a comment letter filed with the SEC yesterday, AFR and CFA urged the agency to comprehensively revise the rules to address weaknesses in virtually every provision of the rules and make them at least as strong as those proposed earlier this year by the CFTC.

No Thumbnail

AFR Comment to OCC on Overdraft and Payday Loans

“AFR submitted comments in response to proposed guidance from the OCC addressing payday loans by banks and high-cost overdraft programs. We urged the agency to immediately take supervisory/enforcement action to stop Wells Fargo and US Bank, along with a couple of smaller OCC-supervised banks, from making payday loans. These loans undermine state laws aimed at protecting residents from high-cost loans that trap people in debt, as well as federal law aimed at protecting military service members from these loans. We also urged the OCC to at last put an end to the common bank practice of reordering customers’ transactions to drive up overdraft fees.”