Americans for Financial Reform

Letter to Congress: AFR Opposition Letter to House Capital Formation Bills

AFR opposes a series of legislative proposals that have recently been approved by House committees, and, in some cases, by the full House of Representatives, and that seek to amend the federal securities laws in ways that would be harmful to investors. Some of the House proposals directly weaken regulatory oversight and threaten investor protection, while others seek to alter policy in a more subtle or incremental fashion.

News Release: Payday Lender, Eastman Briefs Highlight Weak Legal Case Against CFPB

Washington, D.C. — Briefs filed by the payday lending lobby and John Eastman, the lawyer who tried to help former President Trump overturn the 2020 election, highlight the extremely weak legal case that this predatory industry has against the funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a vital federal agency that polices the financial services market on behalf of everyday people.

In The News: Lawmakers ask how big is too big for US banks (Risk.net)

“Cox compares the restrictions on bank M&A with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, first developed as a way to calculate concentration in the airline industry,” said Alex Philo, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. “The Department of Justice allows this to go up to 2,500 in other sectors, says Cox, but for banks, the limit works out at 1,800, and an acquisition can cause a bank’s index to jump by 200 points.”

In The News: Welcome to Blackstone U.S.A. (Tablet Magazine)

A 2022 research memo from Americans for Financial Reform, a nonpartisan nonprofit coalition, found that private equity firms are now landlords to at least 1.6 million families across the United States. This figure is likely an underestimate.

Statement: Statement for the Record in Response to House Financial Services Committee Recent Hearing on Digital Assets

Americans for Financial Reform submitted a statement for the record to the House Financial Services Committee in response to the Committee’s June 13 hearing on digital assets, entitled, “The Future of Digital Assets: Providing Clarity for the Digital Asset Ecosystem.”

Letters to Regulators: Comment Letter in Support of the SEC’s Proposal to Modernize Beneficial Ownership Reporting

AFREF, the AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and Public Citizen submitted a comment letter in support of the SEC’s proposal to modernize beneficial ownership reporting in response to a new memorandum by the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis.

News Release: Federal Insurance Office Report Sees Fragmented Approach to Climate-Related Risks

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Insurance Office (FIO) today released a report on climate-related regulation and supervision of insurers. The report assesses the limitations of existing regulation and includes 20 recommendations.

Letters to Regulators: Comment Letter to FHFA on Language Access, Fair Lending Oversight, and EHF

The Language Access Task Force of Americans for Financial Reform (AFR) submits the following comments in strong support of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Fair Lending Oversight and Equitable Housing Finance.

In The News: SEC Advisory Group Calls for Leveraged ETFs Name Change (Financial Times)

The recommendation of requiring a minimum number of holdings to qualify as an ETF would also effectively make single-stock ETFs illegal, Park noted. “We decided that recommendation was going to be a distraction,” Park said. “Effectively, the genie is out of the bottle on this.” “There’s a difference between losing money because you made a bad trade and losing money because you didn’t know how the product worked,” Park said.

Letters to Regulators: NCUA Should Bolster Staff Capacity, Training, Tools, Research & Analysis, and Guidance on Climate-related Financial Risk

Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment letter endorsed by The Greenlining Institute and Public Citizen, in response to the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)’s request for information on climate-related financial risk. The letter urges the NCUA to proceed with critical next steps