Senate confirms Chopra to lead Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Source
Sylvan Lane | The Hill
“Rohit Chopra is the consumer watchdog our country needs. He is up to the challenge of protecting people’s wallets from predatory practices, ranging from lending discrimination to COVID relief scams to abusive debt collection practices,” said Graciela Aponte-Diaz, acting federal advocacy director for the Center For Responsible Lending, a pro-regulation non-profit.

Student Loan Debt by Gender: Women face larger debt burdens on average than their male counterparts

Larger student debt levels, the racial wealth gap—as well as unequal access to and outcomes within higher education—are other socioeconomic factors that reinforce each other and negatively impact women of color. In 2019, the Center for Responsible lending reported that African American women and Latinas had both the highest average student loan debt balances and were paid 61 and 53 cents, respectively, for every dollar earned by White men.

Desalojos: ¿cómo solicitar ayuda para pagar su hipoteca o alquiler atrasado?

Más de 6 millones de familias permanecen en riesgo de perder sus hogares por incumplir los pagos de su hipoteca o alquiler, y aunque la gran parte de los afectados aseguran que han tratado de solicitar ayuda, no la consiguen por lo complicado del proceso, por lo que la Secretaria de Vivienda y Desarrollo Humano, Marcia Fudge, señaló que se está trabajando para simplificar el trámite y evitar que las personas sean desalojadas.

How to Choose a Bank Account Without Overdraft Fees

Source
Penelope Wang | Consumer Reports
As noted earlier, many major banks offer Bank On accounts. All told, these accounts are available at 40 percent of bank branches nationwide, according to David Rothstein, senior principal at CFE Fund, a nonprofit that leads the Bank On initiative and certifies these accounts. Still, these accounts might not be prominently displayed online, or consumers may get steered toward other types of accounts, says Peter Smith, senior researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending.

Chipping Away at the Borrower-Defense Backlog

Source
Alexis Gravely | Inside Higher Ed
Notably, the department considered and mentioned the ownership of each of the institutions in its announcement. That hasn’t traditionally been done, said Julia Barnard, a researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending, noting that CRL was glad to see individual owners held accountable. But the Biden administration could be doing more to help defrauded students, such as by providing group discharges for students who attended these institutions but didn’t apply for borrower defense to repayment, added Barnard.

Are state interest-rate caps an automatic win for borrowers?

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Annie Millerbernd | Associated Press
Small-dollar, short-term lenders, unburdened by a federal maximum interest rate, can charge borrowers rates of 400% or more for their loans. But more states are bringing that number down by setting rate caps to curb high-interest lending. Currently, 18 states and Washington, D.C. , have laws that limit short-term loan rates to 36% or lower, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. Other states are weighing similar legislation.

The Bachelor PPP loan drama shows the program was flawed from the start

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Emily Stewart and Li Zhou | Vox
“It highlights the problems that we saw and were talking about all along. It’s another newer, more flashy example of the issues with the program,” said Ashley Harrington, federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending. “For us, the problem was not just about who was getting the loans but who wasn’t getting the loans.”

‘Amazon can get anything in the world physically to your door in under 48 hours. It takes Uncle Sam six days’: Wells Fargo defends stimulus-check delay

Source
Andrew Keshner | MarketWatch
Speed counts and any sluggishness is a particular problem now, Klein said. “That time delay costs American living on the edge millions, billions in fees,” he added. Banks collected approximately $11.7 billion in overdraft fees in 2019, according to study last year from the Center for Responsible Lending.