The Daily Money: Thinking of using a buy now, pay later plan? Good luck getting a refund.

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Jayme Deerwester | USA Today
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...

Adjustable-rate mortgage vs. fixed-rate mortgage: ‘It’s amazing what people don’t know about mortgages’

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Leslie Albrecht | Marketwatch
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...

The racial justice argument for student debt relief

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Jaylon Herbin & Wisdom Cole | The Hill
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...

Klarna to open Los Angeles pop-up shop

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Tatiana Walk-Morris | Retail Dive
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...

Why super long mortgages won't be a thing, and why that's good news

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Jim Dalrymple II | Inman
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...

Gaming your finances to get the perfect credit score

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Marketplace Tech
“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...

Women of color found to face worse student debt, job losses

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The Chicago Tribune
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.

Credit scores and the bias behind them

David Silberman, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsible Lending, said this is part of a bigger problem. “Credit scores very much are reflecting of the history of discrimination in the country,” he said. Silberman, who spent a decade at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and years in the financial services industry, has thought about how algorithms can reflect...