CRL in the News
According to the Chicago Tribune, Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending are planning to release a survey that shows at least 80 percent of Americans are concerned by Trump’s recent efforts to limit oversight of banks and payday lenders, and potentially shut down the database of consumer complaints.
Americans for Financial Reform and the Center for Responsible Lending released a survey Tuesday showing that roughly 80 percent of voters polled are concerned about the Trump administration's impact on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In 2013, the state created a small-dollar loan program to regulate loans between $300 and $2,500. The state caps interest on those loans between 20 and 30 percent, but any loan above $2,500 is the “real Wild, Wild West,” said Graciela Aponte-Diaz, California policy director at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit focused on consumer lending.
“These kind of provisions would open a loophole and open a gateway to the same old predatory lenders that have migrated online,” said Scott Astrada, CRL’s director of federal advocacy.
“This report calls for expanding debt traps and ripping up consumer protections at the state and federal levels," said Scott Astrada, a director for the Center for Responsible Lending. “Consumer protection laws are critical to safeguarding Americans’ wallets. They should be upheld, and this report should be roundly rejected.”
Congress failed to repeal the rule when it had the chance due in part to public support for the regulation, but the Treasury Department’s added push to rescind the rule could give the CFPB under Mulvaney additional cover to do so, Scott Astrada, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Bloomberg Law.
"It's a comprehensive package that seeks to make college more affordable, more accessible, and hold institutions more accountable for the results that they achieve,” explains Ashley Harrington, a special assistant to the president of the Center for Responsible Lending. “And so we think that it's a big, strong step in the right direction."
Today, the Center for Responsible Lending released a new report examining the repayment experiences of borrowers of longer-term payday loans in Colorado. The report is based on focus groups that were conducted in four Colorado cities in September 2017. The full report is worth the read, but here are the key takeaways...
These loans tend to carry much higher APRs than bank or credit union loans, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. They also generally come with high upfront fees and require borrowers to put down what the center calls "a disproportionate percentage of the car's actual value."
"It puts so much responsibility on students and students alone," said Ashley Harrington, a lawyer at the Center for Responsible Lending, "and on no other piece of this puzzle."