CRL in the News

Seventeen states plus the District of Columbia either cap interest rates so low that lenders don’t set up shop there or bar the use of a vehicle title as a collateral for a loan, said Lisa Stifler, deputy director of state policy for the Center for Responsible Lending. The center is a North Carolina nonprofit that aims to protect low-income...

"The bill even specifically exempts payday and car title lenders — notorious for springing devastating debt traps for their already vulnerable customers — from any regulation," added Yana Miles, senior legislative counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending.

“The director of an agency would be moving with the political wind,” Miles said. “If there is a law on the books that already says if there are big problems with how someone handles an agency, there is process for removing them, why make it at-will? That just politicizes the agency.”

The U.S. House is expected to vote Thursday on the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, a bill that would eliminate consumer protections and destroy safeguards in place to avert financial crises like the one California just survived. The bill should be called the “Wrong Choice Act,” because it will turn back the clock to 2007, when toxic and manipulative financial products...

The CHOICE Act would eliminate the CFPB’s power to regulate “small-dollar credit,” including “payday loans, vehicle title loans, or other similar loans” with extremely high interest rates that are used by more than 19 million mostly lower income US households to make ends meet when they’re lacking other options. Given the interest, these loans can lead to a cycle of...

“The Center for Responsible Lending believes that addressing predatory lending practices requires effective regulation, enforcement and strategies to make consumers aware of how to combat abuses,” said Chris Kukla, Executive Vice President with the Center for Responsible Lending. “DCA’s announcement today, as part of an overall effort to make the car buying market safer for New York City consumers, is...

The proposal “would hurt rural and working families across the country,” said Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending. He said Stegman’s proposal in effect abandons the affordable housing goals and waters down the companies’ duty to serve all markets. One problem not addressed in Stegman’s plan, Calhoun said, is how to prevent new housing-finance models from charging...

As also noted by House Republicans, the CFPB has used that jurisdiction to propose a federal regulation on payday, vehicle title and certain other high-cost installment loans. But the sentence on page 403 of the Financial Choice Act could change that. As Diane Standaert, director of state policy for the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending, tellsConsumerist, "It's a shocking provision...

With that one line, Republican lawmakers have declared their willingness to allow people facing financial difficulties to be at the mercy of predatory lending practices that typically involve annual interest rates approaching 400%. "They’re trying to sneak in that provision,” Diane Standaert, executive vice president of the Center for Responsible Lending, told me. “It seems like they hoped no one...

If you decide to trade in your car, be aware that this doesn’t eliminate negative equity — it rolls it into the monthly payment on your new loan. This means you could end up taking on even more debt. “What’s more likely is you’re going to end up just constantly rolling over negative equity,” says Chris Kukla, executive vice president...