CRL in the News
It can be difficult to get a refund if something goes wrong with the purchase, according to Charla Rios, deputy director of research at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about financial products. “They don't come with the same protections of credit cards, so the consumer may end up with no merchandise at all, but still have their money taken out of their accounts," she says.
ARMs today are less risky, thanks in part to borrower protections established by the Dodd-Frank Act, according to Ricard Pochkhanawala, senior policy counsel at the National Center for Responsible Lending. Dodd-Frank required lenders to fully document a borrower’s income and assets and their ability to repay an ARM before the loan was made, and it said that borrowers must qualify for the loan based on the fully-indexed rate, not the introductory or “teaser” interest rate.
To take her first steps onto the storied yard of her dream school, Bianca Jones didn’t just get the grades and write a strong application; she applied for five different types of financial aid, including a work–study position. She took on additional jobs, but still came up short of what she needed to pay for her Howard University education, so both she and her mother took out loans to make it possible.
In response to the risks posed by the BNPL industry, a push for regulation has also emerged. In March, 77 nonprofit organizations, including the Center for Responsible Lending and the Association for Financial Counseling & Family Education, called on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to implement stronger regulations on buy now, pay later companies. For its part, the CFPB has urged credit reporting bureaus to standardize procedures for reporting consumers’ buy now, pay later transactions.
Very long mortgages are unlikely to become a big thing in the U.S. One of the main obstacles that stands between American consumers and longer mortgages is a set of regulations that emerged after the financial crisis of 2008. Eric Stein, senior vice president at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Inman that in the run-up to the housing bubble there were products known as “affordability mortgages.”
“So at a high level, we sort of know,” said David Silberman, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsible Lending, “but precisely what, what ‘credit history’ means and how it’s scored? Or what ‘types of credit’ means and how it’s scored? That’s all black box.” Nevertheless, there is an entire industry promising easy fixes to improve credit scores, some which work, and some that don’t. Credit scoring companies are aware of most of these strategies, and regularly update their models to account for new types of data and changing consumer behaviors.
In North Carolina, about 1.3 million borrowers have student loans and owe about $48 billion, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.
Women of color have less job security than before the COVID-19 pandemic and are struggling to repay their student loans, according to a new report released by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). The U.S. economy added 6.7 million jobs in 2021, but the gains made in the workforce have not been shared equally across genders, the report says.