Press Releases

The American Bankers Association and industry consultants claim surveys show customers have "opted in" to high-fee debit card overdraft coverage because they want this service. But these surveys likely only show the success of aggressive, deceptive marketing campaigns to steer customers into bad products, not true customer preference. Industry-sponsored survey results would be more credible if banks and credit unions...

The Honorable John Walsh Acting Comptroller Office of the Comptroller of the Currency 250 E Street, SW Washington, DC 20219-001 Dear Acting Comptroller Walsh: As banks continue their campaigns to persuade consumers to agree to pay steep fees for debit card overdrafts, we urge the Office of Comptroller of the Currency to adopt stricter guidance that effectively requires banks to...

USA Today Op-Ed By Julia Gordon, CRL Senior Policy Counsel julia.gordon@responsiblelending.org 202-349-1878 For years, mortgage loan servicing companies have engaged in shoddy business practices, ranging from misapplied payments to evicting homeowners who have never missed a payment. Now employees of these companies have admitted to falsifying thousands upon thousands of affidavits used to toss families out of their homes. The...

National civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Fair Housing Alliance, National Council of La Raza, the NAACP, and the Center for Responsible Lending are renewing their April 2007 call to institute an immediate national moratorium on foreclosures. Until lenders demonstrate that they are adhering to all existing laws, regulations, and contractual guidelines...

Five Maine residents filed a complaint today against GMAC Mortgage, LLC (GMAC) on behalf of themselves and a class of Maine homeowners, alleging that the company routinely and systematically files false certifications that it has a right to foreclose on Maine homeowners, and false affidavits when asking courts to enter foreclosure judgments. The homeowners complain that GMAC files these false...

One in seven homeowners with a mortgage is past due or in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's latest report on home loan delinquencies. That's up from one in eight a year ago and one in 11 two years ago. Although there was a dip in the share of homes in foreclosure, the report shows that the foreclosure epidemic...

"For years, consumer advocates have been deeply troubled by 'yield-spread premiums (YSPs),' the routine payments to brokers and lenders that essentially function as kickbacks for overcharging on home loans. The Federal Reserve's final rules on YSPs, issued yesterday, mark a welcome milestone that will finally end this practice—saving money for home buyers and making it easier to shop for the...

Latinos and African Americans in California have experienced significantly higher foreclosure rates than non-Hispanic borrowers in the state, according to first-of-its-kind research released today by the Center for Responsible Lending. As a result, these communities represent more than half of all foreclosures, with 48% of foreclosures on Latinos and 8% on African Americans. These borrowers were more likely to receive...

"American families, especially those most vulnerable financially, could save millions of dollars a year in costly overdraft fees if guidelines the FDIC proposed today are adopted. The guidelines would encourage the banks the FDIC oversees to offer customers lower-cost overdraft alternatives rather than charge unlimited high-cost overdraft fees—as many banks do, even on small debit card transactions. Under the proposal...

As the August 15th deadline nears for bank and credit union customers to opt in to high-cost overdraft programs, a new CRL analysis finds these firms market most aggressively and often misleadingly to their most vulnerable customers. Banks target these customers because they likely live on the edge financially and therefore are most likely to repeatedly overdraw accounts. To induce...