CRL in the News

Payday lenders like tax season. That’s because they know a good number of people will come to them to cash refund checks, and they will collect a nice bounty in fees. A quick Google search finds all sorts of such companies touting how easy they make it for people to get their tax money. It can be tempting for those...

Two years since its launch in the U.S., Amazon Cash, Amazon’s reloadable prepaid card, faces adoption hurdles. The payment method initially rolled out as a feature to help unbanked or underbanked customers (those who don’t have bank accounts or don’t rely on their bank accounts for a majority of their transactions) shop on Amazon. To use Amazon Cash, customers log...

In the waning days of the Obama administration, Deutsche Bank made a series of unusually frank admissions in a U.S. court filing. The German bank acknowledged that during the housing boom it made intentionally false representations to buyers of its mortgage-backed securities, concealing the actual risks from purchasers of the bonds. It lied, for example, about borrowers’ credit scores. It...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — (RealEstateRama) — The Senate confirmed Mark Calabria as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) –the federal regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – led by acting director Joseph Otting since early January. Calabria, who has served as chief economist for Vice President Mike Pence, was nominated to head the FHFA by the...

College-sponsored bank accounts ding students with millions of dollars in fees each year, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Education Department under President Donald Trump never published the analysis but advocacy groups recently obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request. The bureau reviewed 573 colleges across the country with marketing agreements with banks...

Stephen Marley comes from music royalty. Sean Garrett has written and produced smash hits for Beyoncé, Usher and Ciara. Even so, when they and hundreds of lesser-known names in the world of hip-hop and rap needed cash, one Wall Street figure emerged as an unlikely source behind the financing: hedge-fund titan Jamie Dinan. In a few short years, Sound Royalties...

They are pricey, pesky and often designed to catch you off guard when you can least afford them. Checking and savings account fees can add to the cost of closing a bank account or force a low account balance into the negatives. So what bank fees should you be looking out for? And how can you avoid them if your...

As the Brookings report authors — Robin Howarth and Lisa Stifler of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending — note, a 1998 change to the Higher Education Act opened the door to colleges enrolling more than half of their students in online programs. Seeking cost-efficiency, scale and the chance to reach more adult students, for-profits were early adopters. Today for-profits...

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Debt is a major challenge for some Washington families, and measures moving through the Legislature could give them a bit of relief. House Bill 1602 would cap the interest rate companies can charge on consumer debt collection after winning a court judgment at 9 percent. The current rate is 12 percent – the highest in the nation...

We all have heard the numbers about escalating student loan debt across the country. Maine is no exception. Residents of our state carry more than $6 billion in education debt. Excessive student debt takes money out of Maine’s economy. MECEP’s analysis indicates that education debt held by Mainers could support 6,000 jobs and three-quarters of a billion dollars in consumer...