As communities across the country face increasingly severe and frequent climate disasters, a new guide released today by the Equitable & Just Insurance Initiative offers a slate of actions local and state governments can take to protect renters, homeowners, communities, and insurance policyholders.
Banking has changed a lot since 1977, but CRA regulations have not been meaningfully updated in three decades. In 2023, the banking regulators modernized the old brick and mortar banking rules for the modern era and strengthened CRA performance evaluations. Under new Trump-appointed leadership, regulators are now inexplicably walking away from these improvements.
Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a comment to the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) on its proposal to evaluate nonbank mortgage lenders in New York based on their performance in meeting the credit needs of the communities where they operate, including needs related to increasing climate risks on housing
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly on a bill that would assess a five percent surcharge on insurers for policies that support fossil fuel infrastructure in the state. The funds collected would then help fund resilience and flood data transparency.
Today, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced its withdrawal from participation in the interagency Principles for Climate-Related Financial Risk Management for Large Financial Institutions. The climate principles covered large banks with over $100 billion in assets and were released jointly in 2023 by all three federal bank regulators: the OCC, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Tuesday afternoon, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte sent out a flurry of orders via tweets containing photographs of documents, including rescission of its Advisory Bulletin on Climate-Related Risk Management (Climate Risk AB) and waiver of Equitable Housing Finance Plan (EHFP) requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises).
AFREF submitted a comment to the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on its solicitation on implementation of SB253 and SB261, climate disclosure laws for large companies doing business in California. AFREF also joined a coalition comment led by California Environmental Voters.
AFR published a policy memo outlining how climate change represents an imminent financial and economic threat, including statistics around increasingly costly disasters, rising uninsured losses, eroding real estate values, ballooning consumer debt, and food price inflation.
AFR and 24 partners sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee opposing the FIRM Act. The bill purports to curb banking discrimination and enable equal opportunity to obtain financial services. But it would do nothing to prevent actual discrimination or improve access to financial services for people in protected classes.
President Donald Trump’s energy secretary and two of his major donors won a key victory last week when the Securities and Exchange Commission moved to back off a rule requiring large companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and any plans to reduce them.