Press Releases
March 27, 2017
Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 28, at approximately 2 p.m. ET, Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) President Mike Calhoun will testify before the House Financial Services Committee’s Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee for a hearing entitled “The State of Bank Lending in America.”
Calhoun will discuss recent trends in lending and how the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has made the financial industry more accountable to the public. View a list of all four of the hearing witnesses.
Washington, D.C. – Tuesday, March 28
Who: Mike Calhoun,...
March 23, 2017
Today, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and its sister organization, The Leadership Education Fund, announced the selection of Vanita Gupta as the new president and CEO of both organizations. Gupta is an accomplished advocate and litigator who most recently served as head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice under President Barack Obama. She succeeds civil rights titan Wade Henderson who served as president and CEO since June of 1996. Henderson announced his retirement in November of 2015.
Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) President Mike...
March 16, 2017
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its draft licensing manual for fintech firms seeking the agency's new limited-purpose national bank charters. The draft offers detail on how the OCC will apply the licensing standards and requirements in existing regulations and policies to fintech firms applying for special national bank charters. The draft will be open for comment until April 14, 2017.
In January, more than 250 organizations, including the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), sent a letter to Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry urging him not to grant...
March 16, 2017
Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) Policy Counsel Yana Miles issued the following statement today after President Donald Trump Released his budget blueprint for fiscal year 2018:
President Trump has crafted a budget that will severely impact consumers, especially those with low-to-moderate incomes. From disadvantaged youth served by Job Corps centers across the country to senior citizens trying to transition to financial limitations in what should be their golden years, this budget proposal harms far more than it helps.
Although education is generally viewed as the ladder to...
March 7, 2017
Proposals Would Boost Transparency & Accountability Across Financial Sector
Today, a group of congressional lawmakers, led by U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), introduced seven bills to restrict forced arbitration and improve access to our judicial system for servicemembers, consumers, workers, and students. Across the country, fine print agreements--from financial to employment contracts--too often include arbitration clauses to strip individuals from receiving their fair day in court. Pushing this effort forward to protect consumers are U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Dick Durbin...
March 3, 2017
Today, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) unveiled its new logo after nearly 15 years of using a green and blue chevron model. The new colors, blue, orange, and yellow and the community circle will underscore CRL’s affiliation as part of the Center for Community Self-Help (Self-Help) family, which also includes two credit unions and a nonprofit loan fund.
Since CRL was established in 2002, the organization has expanded to three offices across the country. CRL remains headquartered in Durham, N.C., with offices in Washington, D.C. and Oakland, California. In nearly 15 years, CRL’s...
February 16, 2017
Case Granted En Banc Is Essential Step In Maintaining Key Consumer Protections
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) petition to hear PHH Corporation vs. CFPB en banc. This order means that the CFPB can continue to operate as Congress intended during the pendency of the en banc proceeding, and is an important first step toward a decision by the full Court invalidating the panel’s previous and unprecedented 2-1 ruling. (PDF)
The CFPB recently challenged the panel’s decision, which undermined the CFPB’s independence...
February 16, 2017
Proposals Attacking CFPB Would Eviscerate Essential Consumer Protections
This week, a group of Republican Senators, led by U.S. Senator David Perdue (R-GA), introduced a bill to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) budget come from Congress, instead of allowing the CFPB to receive independent funding as intended when Congress approved its creation in 2010. Additionally, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and U.S. Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX) have introduced legislation this week to completely eliminate the CFPB—an agency that has provided 29 million people who...
February 10, 2017
The United States Senate confirmed Jeff Sessions as Attorney General by a partisan vote of 52-47 this week. On Tuesday evening, Senate Republicans used a procedural maneuver to prevent Senator Elizabeth Warren from reading from the floor of the chamber a 1986 letter from Mrs. Coretta Scott King, who opposed Sessions in his bid for a federal judgeship. Mrs. King had written, “Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts.”
Nikitra Bailey, an Executive Vice...
February 3, 2017
This afternoon, President Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order “directing the Treasury secretary and financial regulators to come up with a plan to revise rules the Dodd-Frank law put in place.”
Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) Executive Vice President Debbie Goldstein released the following statement:
If this Administration has not learned from the mistakes that caused the 2008 economic crisis, they are doomed to repeat them. Lest we forget, lax regulation allowed Wall Street to back extremely reckless loans whose failure snowballed into a financial crisis and...