Research

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Online lenders offering earned wage and cash advances primarily through cell phone apps have proliferated in the past decade, with companies claiming that existing credit laws do not apply to their products.

A new poll from the bipartisan polling team Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting provides fresh evidence that voters across the political spectrum solidly support a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and tough oversight of Wall Street. This support reaches across blue and red states, and is, in some cases, higher in the battleground states of this year's...

The nation’s leading residential solar energy financing lenders operate under a business model that uses many of the predatory methods employed in the subprime mortgage lending market of 2007-2010.

Consumers who took out small loans using cash advance apps paid triple-digit annual interest rates, experienced high levels of repeat reborrowing, and incurred more bank overdraft fees.

The Department of Education’s newly launched income-driven repayment (IDR) program, “Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE),” represents a significant step forward in improving the affordability of federal student loan repayments for millions of borrowers. SAVE accomplishes that goal by basing repayment on a realistic estimate of a borrower’s discretionary income considering the borrower’s family size and reducing the amount of...

Read a new report from CRL and California Policy Lab on the Department of Education’s latest income-driven repayment plan, SAVE which could revive the homeownership dreams of millions.

Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) or pay-in-four products allow consumers to purchase goods in four equal, often interest-free installments over a set time period (often 6 weeks). BNPL is often available directly at checkout on an e-commerce website (like Amazon or Apple) or through a third-party smartphone or web application. Examples of third-party BNPL providers include Affirm, AfterPay, Klarna, Splitit...

Among the hottest consumer finance topics in recent years is the proliferation of online lenders offering fintech cash advances, including the subset of those lenders who offer earned wage advances (EWA). These are very short-term loans of small dollar amounts that users can access through a smartphone app. Lenders that offer these products strenuously attempt to avoid being regulated like...

Many people involved in the criminal legal system live on the economic margins. Most defendants are unable to hire their own lawyer due to indigency. In North Carolina, the average person in prison doesn’t have a high school diploma. The cost of involvement in the criminal legal system can quickly add up to thousands of dollars, but the people expected...