Press Releases

Today, U.S. Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill to severely weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by dismantling the structure of its leadership. The bill, Consumer Financial Protection Board Act, would turn the CFPB’s leadership into a five member commission where it would be vulnerable to partisan gridlock...

National Consumer Advocacy Groups File Motion to Intervene with DC Circuit and Maintain CFPB's Constitutional Authority to Protect Americans from Wall Street Greed Today in a joint effort, advocate groups including Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), Self-Help Credit Union (SHCU), The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG)...

Cost-savings for home buyers purchasing a Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed mortgage loan was eliminated by the first executive order of the new Trump Administration. The move rolls back a premium rate cut of .25 percent that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced early last week, which aimed to save borrowers, especially first-time homebuyers, hundreds of dollars a...

Suit against Navient underscores need to keep the CFPB undisturbed with Richard Cordray as director. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced it is suing Navient, formerly part of Sallie Mae and the nation’s largest servicer of both federal and private student loans, over allegations that it routinely cheated borrowers out of their right to lower loan repayments based on...

Today, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) released research showing troubling outcomes at Colorado’s four-year for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges leave students with lower graduation rates, higher debt loads, and higher defaults on that debt. These difficulties fall especially heavily on students of color, who are disproportionately enrolled in for-profit colleges in Colorado. CRL analyzed date from the U.S. Department of...

Innovation Should Not Come at the Expense of Consumer Protection The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the NAACP have sent a letter to Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry urging him not to offer national charters to financial technology firms, which could severely undermine state oversight and state laws that...

Advocates underscore real threat to state law protections against predatory lenders "The OCC's charter proposal enables companies to avoid state licensing regimes and oversight by state regulators and attorneys general." More than 250 groups sent a letter today to Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry urging him not to grant national charters to financial technology firms, which could preempt...

The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) lauded congressional leaders from the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate for calling on President-elect Donald Trump to reject attempts to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by removing CFPB Director Richard Cordray. Democrats from the House Financial Services Committee, led by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Ranking Member of the Committee on...

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released a survey which highlights that over one-in-four consumers contacted by a debt collection agency felt threatened. Additionally, the CFPB noted in their survey that one in seven consumers contacted about a debt during the previous year were sued in state court. About 75 percent of those sued do not go to the...

The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing today to consider the nomination of Dr. Ben Carson to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Nikitra Bailey, an Executive Vice President for the Center for Responsible Lending's (CRL) released the following statement: The work of the Department of Housing and...