Peter Smith ‌

Peter Smith 800x533 Jun2022

Senior Researcher

Overdraft Fees

Peter Smith is a senior researcher leading on overdraft practices, as well as works on mortgages, student loans and bank payday loan issues. Pete has been with CRL since 2005, authoring numerous reports and briefs, and creating body of often-cited research literature.

He was born and raised in Maryland, and attended the University of Maryland's Honors Program, where he graduated with a BS in Mathematics. Based CRL's Oakland (CA) office, Pete is entering the Masters of City Planning program at the University of California at Berkeley. In his spare time, he is an avid record collector and Scrabble player.

Research & Policy

Unsafe Harbor: The Persistent Harms of High-Cost Installment Loans

Over the past decade, the high-cost small-dollar loan market, once dominated by short-term balloon payment payday loans, has seen the rise of high-cost installment loans with longer terms. Payday loans are typically repaid in a lump-sum, usually due in 14-day periods. Installment loans tend to be larger in size and repaid in several installments, typically over a period of several months. Although they are repaid in installment terms, these loans share similar characteristics with other payday and car-title loans: a lack of underwriting; access to a borrower’s bank account or car as security...
Research
Payday and Other Small Dollar Loans

Debt Under Duress: The Economic Impacts of Bail Bonds on San Francisco Bay Area Residents

Nearly 500,000 people are currently detained pretrial in jails around the United States, in part due to high bail amounts set by the judicial system that individuals cannot afford. That is a six-fold increase in the U. S. pretrial population from the 1970s, when it was closer to 83,000 people detained. Bail is money required in exchange for release from jail while one awaits trial. With bail costs rising, it has been difficult for individuals and their loved ones to afford paying a court directly for the full bail amount. Instead, they have increasingly turned to for-profit bail bond companies...
Research
Debt Collection & Settlement

Necessary Relief: Substantial Cancellation Will Ease the Burden of Unaffordable Student Debt (and Boost the Economy)

The student debt crisis has been building for decades, and millions of families have seen their dreams derailed by unaffordable debt repayment burdens that block their path to financial stability. As college costs rose, students had to take on increasing amounts of debt to pay for higher education. At the same time, state student financial aid offerings were drastically reduced, forcing students and families into long term debt that often grew to be unaffordable over time. Due to longstanding discrimination, students and families of color have less personal, family, and intergenerational...
Research
Student Loans

Court System Overload: The State of Debt Collection in California after the Fair Debt Buyer Protection Act

Over the past 50 years, wage stagnation, as well as already high and rising housing, health care, and education costs have dramatically increased debt loads for the average family. Moreover, recovery from the Great Recession has been uneven. Data show that families of color, Americans born after 1970, and households earning less than $60,000 annually are the least likely to have recovered the wealth they lost in the financial crisis.2 And now, the COVID-19 health and economic crisis has laid bare existing inequities and will perpetuate these families’ economic struggles. Before the crisis...
Research
Debt Collection & Settlement

Overdraft Fees: Banks Must Stop Gouging Consumers During the COVID-19 Crisis

A review of 2019 data shows that big banks continue to collect over $11 billion in overdraft related fees each year. Banks engage in a number of abusive practices that combine to drain massive sums from their customers’ checking accounts. The large majority of these fees are shouldered by banks’ most vulnerable customers, often driving them out of the banking system altogether. Bank overdraft fees cause particular harm to low-income consumers and communities of color, who are already disproportionately excluded from the banking mainstream. This report analyzes the 2019 overdraft-related...
Research
Overdraft Fees

Unfair Market: The State of High-Cost Overdraft Practices in 2017

According to new data released recently by the FDIC, the largest banks in America collected $11.45 billion in overdraft and non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees from American consumers in 2017, an increase of approximately $10 million over the 2016 total. Overdraft fees often impose a great burden on those already living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet. Typically, a small proportion of bank account holders pay a large proportion of total overdraft fees. Since 2015, the FDIC has collected and released information about these controversial penalty fees from banks that have $1...
Research
Overdraft Fees

Repairing A Two-Tiered System: The Crucial but Complex Role of FHA

Since 1934, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has played a vital role in the housing finance system. It serves as the entry point to the mortgage market for many first-time homebuyers and helped create a strong economic recovery following the Great Depression. However, in its early development, the FHA perpetuated racial discrimination in its facilitation of broad mortgage credit liquidity by favoring white borrowers and excluding African-Americans and other people of color. This discrimination is a key contributor to the differing rates of homeownership between whites and people of...
Research
Mortgage Lending

Supporting mortgage lending in rural communities

Nearly 74 million people, about a quarter of the United States population, live in rural areas. That includes 15 million people of color. But according to the authors of a new paper published by the Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, these families are often overlooked in policy discussions on proposed changes to the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), which provide the largest share of mortgage financing in rural areas. GSE mortgage financing meets a critical rural housing need, and it also supports community banks, which are often the only full-service financial institution...
Research
Mortgage Lending

How Overdraft Fees Harm Consumers and Discourage Responsible Bank Products

An analysis of recently available data confirms that financial institutions continue to engage in abusive overdraft practices and that reform is urgently needed. This issue brief highlights five key concerns: Overdraft fees remain an enormous drain on checking account customers. Using newly available call report data as the starting point, we estimate that consumers pay nearly $14 billion annually in overdraft fees Research has consistently found that overdraft fees are disproportionately borne by a relatively small portion of account holders. Further, as an example from our data set of...
Research
Overdraft Fees

The State of Lending in America and Its Impact on U.S. Households

State of Lending provides an across-the-board survey of financial products that Americans use to handle everyday transactions, buy homes and automobiles, and build savings and wealth. The report outlines predatory lending practices in various fields of consumer lending, and explains why protecting fair, affordable access to credit is vital for both consumers and the U.S. economy. The report also describes the regulatory and legislative actions needed to halt the predatory lending practices that exist today and prevent the rise of new abuses. It is intended to inform the critical debate on how...
Research
Consumer Finance

The State of Lending: Bank Payday Loans

Even in the face of strong opposition by banking regulators, a few banks continue to make triple-digit payday loans. In this chapter, our analysis shows no meaningful distinction between storefront payday lending and bank payday lending. Banks give their products names such as "Ready Advance" and "Early Access," but these loans come with the same predatory features and produce the same negative outcomes for borrowers. Bank payday loans carry an annual percentage rate (APR) that averages 225 to 300 percent. In 2011, the median borrower took out 13.5 loans, with over 1/3 of borrowers taking out...
Research

The State of Lending: High-Cost Overdraft Fees

In spite of regulatory changes in recent years, many banks and credit unions continue to charge abusive fees on debit cards and checking accounts. In "High-Cost Overdraft Practices," CRL discusses these findings: In 2011, overdraft fees cost consumers $16.7 billion. Debit card transactions trigger the most expensive fees. On debit card purchases, the median overdraft charge is $35 for a $20 overdraft. Debit card purchases and ATM transactions account for at least 35% of all overdraft fees. Two-thirds of these penalty fees are paid by account holders charged more than six fees per year. Banks...
Research
Overdraft Fees