Americans for Financial Reform Education Funded joined with the National Consumer Law Center, the Consumer Federation of America, and other advocacy groups to express our support for recent announcements from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, reflecting their intention to explore carefully-crafted pilot programs aimed at reducing closing costs for homeowners–specifically, a “title acceptance” pilot program. […]

AFREF and 23 signatories submitted a comment letter calling on the Treasury Department and the IRS to finalize a rule implementing the 1% stock buybacks excise tax with strong anti-avoidance provisions. The post Letters to the Regulators: Letter Urging the Treasury and the IRS to Finalize the Stock Buybacks Excise Tax Rule appeared first on Americans […]

AFREF and 11 organizations submitted a comment letter to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in support of a proposal to require public accounting firms to publicly report specified firm- and engagement-level metrics. If finalized, these metrics would provide investors, audit committees, and other stakeholders critical information to compare audit firms, make better-informed decisions, […]

AFREF submitted a second brief with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Reserve calling on the banking regulators to reject the proposed Capital One-Discover merger. The proposed Capital One-Discover merger would have significant anti-competitive impacts that would harm consumers and communities. The merger also fails to meet the requirements and conditions […]

AFREF and more than thirty allied organizations signed onto a letter calling for the banking agencies to finalize strong bank regulatory capital proposals. These are urgently needed to increase the large banks’ safety and soundness, strengthen financial system stability, and preserve ordinary people’s access to financial services. The post Letters to the Regulators: Letter in […]

AFREF and Public Citizen led a coalition letter urging the six relevant agencies to implement section 956 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires them to promulgate a rule banning incentive-based executive pay that incentivizes inappropriate risk-taking. A year after the 2023 banking crisis — and almost fourteen years after the statutory mandate was enacted — […]

AFR joined the Consumer Federation of America and 18 other civil rights, housing, and climate advocacy groups in writing this letter to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners regarding the need for a public, transparent, and national data collection on the property and casualty insurance market. The post Letters to the Regulators: Letter to the […]

AFR-EF joined with the FACT Coalition and 35 organizations committed to affordable housing to support the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the United States (U.S.) Department of the Treasury (Treasury)’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to establish anti-money laundering regulations for certain residential real estate transfers. Aspiring homebuyers and renters alike simply should not […]

AFREF wrote a letter in opposition to the proposed Capital One Financial Corporation acquisition of Discover Financial Services, which would substantially erode competition and disadvantage consumers and merchants. The transaction would create the nation’s biggest credit card lender, one of the biggest banks, and a powerful vertically integrated payments network combined with a branch bank […]