“Monopoly Man became the Internet crush of the day on Wednesday, after upstaging former Equifax CEO Richard Smith at a Senate hearing on the company’s massive data breach. The board game character, whose name is Rich Uncle Pennybags, was brought to life by Amanda Werner, an arbitration campaign manager for Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform, groups that advocate for consumer rights and protections.”
“At the heart of the rule is the common sense principle that lenders check a borrower’s ability to repay before lending money. While praising the CFPB for pushing to stop the debt trap, the coalition calls on the Bureau to build on this progress by quickly working to develop regulations to protect consumers from abusive long-term, high-cost loans. Also, strong state laws, such as rate caps, must continue to be defended and enacted.”
Today at a public hearing at the Department of Education, AFR’s senior policy analyst gave testimony about the need to reinstate the Memorandum of Understanding with the CFPB, ended by Secretary DeVos to widespread criticism.
“We write to express our grave concerns over [Equifax’s] slow response to the
breach and then its shifting, maddening, and ultimately inadequate response to consumers including
our members, clients and other constituencies. We write with several recommendations for what
Congress should and should not do in response.”
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s review of unfair and abusive overdraft practices is complemented by its recent efforts to limit the use of forced arbitration, said five consumer groups in a joint letter sent today to Director Richard Cordray. U.S. Senate leadership is pushing for a vote this week on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to repeal a CFPB rule that restores consumers’ right to join together in court against banks and lenders.
“[E]xecutives for both Wells Fargo and Equifax… will testify in Senate committees next week. Both companies have used arbitration clauses in an attempt to deny consumers access to the courts… ‘This rush toward a vote in the Senate is a cynical attempt to roll back an important consumer protection before anyone gets straight answers from Equifax and Wells Fargo about the damage they’ve done to the financial lives of millions of Americans,’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform.”
This rush toward a vote in the Senate is a cynical attempt to roll back an important consumer protection before anyone gets straight answers from Equifax and Wells Fargo about the damage they’ve done to the financial lives of millions of Americans.
“The vote [came] during the debate over the Financial Services and General Government bill, which funds some basic functions of the federal government, including the Treasury Department… Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) introduced an amendment to take this language out of the appropriations bill and continue to allow the CFPB to regulate payday lenders as it regulates all financial services businesses. The amendment failed with four Republicans joining Ellison to protect borrowers and three Democrats choosing to side with payday predators.”
We call on the Bureau: to require reporting on the full breadth of small business lending; to capture important data about loans applied for and made; and to complete the rulemaking and begin collection of these data expeditiously.
“The regulation, issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on July 10 and scheduled to go into effect in mid-January, came under attack by Republicans in Congress ‘before the ink was even dry,’ says Amanda Werner of Americans for Financial Reform, which is fighting to retain the rule… Consumer privacy advocates hope that the Equifax debacle will remind senators of the importance of the rule. ‘We need to look at how consumers are going to be able to hold these firms accountable,’ Werner says.”