Overview In late May, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) under Trump-appointee and acting director Russell Vought launched a newly redesigned website that deprioritized consumer complaints and reframed the CFPB as a deregulatory agency rather than the nation’s only financial watchdog focused on protecting consumers in the market. As part of this overhaul, the Trump-Vought […]
The undersigned organizations, with cumulative membership and affiliation of over 500,000 Californians, denounce California Insurance Commissioner Lara’s recent rollback which will effectively incapacitate the Prop 103 Consumer Insurance Intervenor Program by making it harder for consumer intervenors to engage and fund their efforts to challenge rate hikes. This insurance industry giveaway will result in less public input on insurance rate setting which will mean people pay higher insurance costs across the state. The next Insurance Commissioner must reverse course.
This is a resource for institutional investors, including pension trustees, seeking to better understand what recent turmoil in private credit could mean for their portfolios. Private credit refers broadly to privately negotiated loans originated by nonbank financial companies like private funds (often managed by big-name private equity firms) and other asset managers. These loans are […]
Insurance commissioners have varying levels of authority over pricing across different states, ranging from significant authority to deny insurance companies’ rate increase requests if they are excessive or inadequate, to being able to enforce compliance only after insurance companies set their own rates, to having no meaningful authority to review and reject rates at all.
State insurance commissioners and legislators play a critical role in determining the insurance premiums people pay for their home insurance.[1] Insurance companies have increased homeowners insurance premiums by an average of 24 percent from 2021 to 2024 nationwide.[2] Premium rates are rising far faster in many places across the country including in a geographically diverse […]
Growing Wall Street control of single family homes is a contributor to our housing crisis, with mega single-family investors (those who own more than 1,000 homes nationwide) controlling an estimated 446,000 homes as of January 2025. Nationally, the presence of corporate landlords in a community has been associated with raised rents, junk fees, reduced maintenance, and increased evictions.
View or download a PDF of the letter here. AFREF submitted a comment opposing the Trump administration effort to undermine fair lending and civil rights law by illegitimately narrowing the scope of lending discrimination protection and enforcement.
View or download a PDF of the letter here AFREF submitted a comment opposing the Trump administration effort to undermine civil rights and fair lending law by severely weakening the small business and farm lending disclosure rules that would exempt half of all loans, reduce essential data collection, and exclude farm lending entirely.
Topic: Climate Finance & Insurance, Private Equity and Private Funds In a new report, Private Equity Climate Risks examines how the Global South is unfairly burdened by private equity’s investments in fossil fuels. While the Global North is responsible for the vast majority of excess emissions, communities of color in the Global South are hit hardest by the […]
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Public Citizen sent a letter in response to the California Department of Insurance’s Long-Term Solvency Planning Proposal, highlighting the need for insurers to comprehensively address both physical and transition risks across underwriting, investing, and operations. “Insurers need to develop climate plans that encompass both climate mitigation and climate adaptation […]