Open Letter to Banks (and OCC): Don’t Make Debt Trap Payday Loans

“In 2013, the FDIC and OCC issued guidance aimed at curbing the harms of these debt trap loans. At the same time, the Federal Reserve issued a supervisory statement to the same end… But today, banks are attacking the FDIC and OCC protections that have prevented banks from trapping people in unaffordable payday loans.”
We write to ask for the bank’s pledge that it will not begin making payday loans, and that it will oppose the
rollback of the regulatory guidance, which would make it easier for other banks to do so.

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Joint Letters: Key Consumer, Labor, and Financial Reform Groups Push Regulators to Revoke Wells Fargo’s Charter and Deposit Insurance

“Courts and multiple agencies have found – and Wells Fargo has admitted – that the bank has repeatedly ‘violat[ed] laws or regulations.’ In addition, Wells Fargo’s prudential regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), has found the bank’s violations constitute ‘unsafe or unsound practices.’ By statute, either of these criteria is sufficient grounds for termination of a bank’s deposit insurance.”

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Letter to Regulator: AFR, 8 organizations provide detailed recommendations to FHFA to improve language access in the mortgage industry

“The burden of interpreting financial services jargon and communicating with lenders and servicers should not rest solely on borrowers. . . . Expanding access to language services throughout the mortgage process would begin to equalize a system that currently undermines the ability of LEP borrowers to understand the complexities of their future homeownership prospects and to protect their home after purchasing it.”

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Letter to Regulators: AFR Opposes SoFi’s Deposit Insurance Application

“…The essence of SoFi’s application is a request to seek the benefits of federal deposit insurance without subjecting SoFi itself or its private equity owners to the well-founded requirements for bank holding companies. The FDIC should not approve the application to facilitate this regulatory arbitrage. …If its application is granted, SoFi will be the first new ILC to secure deposit insurance in over a decade. That will send a clear signal to the marketplace that the FDIC intends once again to approve ILC deposit insurance applications. FDIC should not grant SoFi’s application and allow the ILC loophole to be revived.”

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Letter to Regulators: AFR Calls on the Dept of ED to Enforce, Not Dismantle, Borrower Defense and Gainful Employment

Americans for Financial Reform submitted comments to the Department of Education in strong opposition to any delay to or re-opening of the Borrower Defense to Repayment and Gainful Employment regulations. The Department of Education (the “Department”) has already conduced the arduous process of negotiated rulemaking on both of these rules, where all constituencies were able to weigh in. Establishing new negotiated rulemakings on these rules is a waste of taxpayer money and government resources.

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