CRL in the News

U.S. Bank, one of the country’s biggest banks, has again begun offering customers small, high-cost loans, saying the loans now have safeguards to help keep borrowers from getting in over their heads. The loans, between $100 and $1,000, are meant to help customers deal with unexpected expenses, like a car repair or a medical bill, said Lynn Heitman, executive vice...

Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank last week began offering a small-dollar loan product called Simple Loan that charges interest rates ranging from more than 70 percent to almost 88 percent. "This type of product isn't a safe alternative to a payday loan," Rebecca Borne, senior policy counsel at the center, said in a statement. "And we reject the notion that bank loans...

If you’ve defaulted on a federal student loan, beware: The federal government can take up to 15 percent of your Social Security benefit. The number of people 60 and older with student loan debt quadrupled from 700,000 to 2.8 million between 2005 and 2015, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), threatening financial stability for those heading into retirement...

The trade group representing payday lenders has asked a court for an injunction to block implementation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) small dollar loan rule. The CFPB small dollar loan rule is scheduled to take effect next year, but a larger threat to payday lenders may come in the form of competing products from traditional banks. Last week...

Consumer advocates say strong reforms are needed to better regulate the payday lending industry in Michigan, and they just might have the data to prove it. A new report from the Center for Responsible Lending found that in the past five years, payday lenders have taken more than half a billion dollars in fees from consumers in Michigan, including $94...

U.S. Bank says it will offer nearly instant small loans to its customers, becoming the first bank to provide such a product since federal regulators cleared the way earlier this year amid continuing concerns over the costs of payday loans. Graciela Aponte-Diaz of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending said she’s particularly concerned about U.S. Bank customers who take out...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to revive a program that would allow companies to experiment with new forms of disclosures without facing regulatory penalties. The CFPB could allow for disclosure innovation without giving up its enforcement and oversight tools, Scott Astrada, the director of federal advocacy at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Bloomberg Law in a Sept...

On this tenth anniversary of the financial crisis, there have been many retrospectives on the US government’s response to that catastrophe, with more to come. The commentary to date has largely focused on the extraordinary measures taken to prevent a much deeper collapse of the American and global economies. Measures were implemented to address the immediate crisis and reduce the...

For many students, the path toward enrolling in a for-profit college starts with an advertisement—maybe while browsing online or watching a favorite television show. Either way, the message is usually the same: Get off the couch and do something with your life. The ads feature compelling and relatable stories: A young—or perhaps middle-aged—African-American stuck in a dead-end job and looking...

Lawsuits filed by homeowners, city governments and nonprofits like the American Civil Liberties Union accuse Wall Street banks of targeting African-American and Latino customers with predatory loans leading up to the financial crisis. “In many ways, we had a dual credit market where they were just getting pushed into the riskier side of the market, and a lot of that...