CRL in the News

The first federal agency dedicated to serving the financial needs of consumers will be five years old on July 21. Created in the aftermath of the worst financial calamity since the 1930′s Great Depression, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created through the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

Banks have long argued that overdrafts, which allow customers to draw accounts below zero for a fee, are a service that consumers value. Consumers groups counter that the vested interest banks have in encouraging account holders to overdraw has to be met with hard-and-fast rules limiting overdrafts and the cost of the service. “We want to see the bureau use its authority to really reform the way overdraft and checking account programs work,” said Rebecca Borne, a researcher with the Center for Responsible Lending.

Ninety-six percent of Democrats and 89 percent of Republicans regard financial regulation as important, according to the survey, which was conducted in June by Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending.

While economists contend that the economic recession is over, the reality for much of black America is starkly different. Racial disparities in unemployment and under-employment persist. And homeownership, a key measure of economic health for consumers and communities alike, continues its downward decline even now.

Payday lenders aren’t creating jobs with their predatory lending practices, and they aren’t driving economic growth, they are standing in the way. Small business owners, their employees, and their customers would fare better with sound protections from payday lenders. A recent study from the Center for Responsible Lending found that in states that effectively regulate payday lending, consumers that would have spent $2.2 billion on payday loan fees and interest payments instead spend that money on the goods and services offered at local businesses.

Installment lenders offer annual percentage rates that range from 36% to 100% or perhaps higher. Payday loans typically have APRs of 350% or more. "Installment loans are a much safer structure," said Martin Eakes, the co-founder and chief executive of Self-Help Credit Union and the Center for Responsible Lending, who has fought battles with payday lenders in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington.

The proposed rule “must be strengthened, must be significantly strengthened. The CFPB has the right approach on the ability to repay. And it must close the loopholes. It would help millions of Americans if the CFPB closes the loopholes,” said Keith Corbett, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, during a June 14 conference call with journalists on payday lending issues.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed rule requiring payday and car title lenders to assess borrowers’ ability to repay will, by all projections, reduce the number of these loans being made. The question often comes up: What will those consumers who might have taken out a payday or car title loan do instead?

The Center for Responsible Lending said last year that there are 836 storefronts in Ohio generating more than $500 million in predatory loan fees each year – twice as much as they collected in 2005, Brown said.

“Payday loans are a debt trap by design and lead to cascade of other financial consequences such as increased overdraft fees and even bankruptcy,” the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer group, said in a recent report.