Letter to HUD opposing the set of deregulatory efforts now under way that are withdrawing crucial commonsense oversight from the housing and financial markets, enabling discrimination, and thereby increasing barriers to affordable housing
Letter to HUD opposing the set of deregulatory efforts now under way that are withdrawing crucial commonsense oversight from the housing and financial markets, enabling discrimination, and thereby increasing barriers to affordable housing
Join us on May 21st for an analysis and discussion of the important developments in the regulation and supervision of large banks, and their effects on financial stability and economic security. View the details here, or below.
New members of Congress demonstrated substantially less reliance on money from the financial services industry than incumbents who won re-election in 2018. First-term Democratic members of the House raised, on average, 17 percent of the money for their campaign committees from small donors, compared with 9.4 percent by Democratic incumbents who won re-election.
Letter from 80 groups opposing the CFPB’s changes to its no-action letter policy and new sandbox proposal
AFR was among 25 organizations that signed-on to comments by the National Consumer Law Center on evaluating undue hardship claims in student loan bankruptcy. You can view or download the PDF here.
AFR sent the below letter to the Federal Reserve commenting on a package of proposals for stress test transparency AFR Comment on Stress Test Proposal Package
“On behalf of Americans for Financial Reform, we are writing to express our support for the Department of Labor’s (DOL’s) conflict of interest rule or “Fiduciary Duty” rule and our strong opposition to eliminating or weakening the rule. This rule strengthens protections for retirement savers by requiring individuals or entities which provide retirement investment advice […]
We strongly support using Consolidated Foreign Subsidiary (FCS) status as the basis for cross border enforcement rather than the more amorphous and subjective “guaranteed subsidiary” status. …We strongly disagree with the Commission’s proposal to exclude a wide range of transactions involving foreign branches and affiliates of U.S. swap dealers from external business conduct requirements.
“Americans for Financial Reform (“AFR”) appreciates this opportunity to comment on the above referenced Proposed Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (the “Proposal”) issued by the Federal Reserve, FDIC, FHFA, NCUA, OCC, and SEC (the “Agencies”)… Section 956 is a particularly significant and vital element of the Dodd-Frank Act. There is widespread agreement among students of the 2008 financial crisis that the design of bonus pay was a central contributor to the crisis. “
“This is a huge problem – one that, over time, can easily add up to a difference of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement savings. Under the current rules, some of the financial professionals offering retirement investment advice are legally bound to look out for the best interests of their clients; but other professionals, while perceived as having such a duty and clearly benefiting from the perception, are free to put their own interests first, even if that means saddling their clients with needlessly high fees or inappropriate risks.”