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.
The California State Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara approved a $1 billion bailout of the state’s FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) plan to help cover over 3,400 claims it has received due to the devastating Los Angeles fires. The FAIR plan provides insurance to consumers who were dropped by their private insurers.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Acting Chair Mark Uyeda has requested that the 8th Circuit halt litigation of the agency’s climate transparency rule in light of his and Commissioner Peirce’s opposition to the rule and President Trump’s anti-regulatory order.
Dozens of consumer protection, community development, environmental, climate, and racial justice advocates have joined together to form the Equitable & Just Insurance Initiative, a coalition that aims to develop solutions that can guide community leaders and policy advocates working to address the climate-driven insurance crisis.