CRL in the News

Consumer advocates say strong reforms are needed to better regulate the payday lending industry in Michigan, and they just might have the data to prove it. A new report from the Center for Responsible Lending found that in the past five years, payday lenders have taken more than half a billion dollars in fees from consumers in Michigan, including $94...

U.S. Bank says it will offer nearly instant small loans to its customers, becoming the first bank to provide such a product since federal regulators cleared the way earlier this year amid continuing concerns over the costs of payday loans. Graciela Aponte-Diaz of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending said she’s particularly concerned about U.S. Bank customers who take out...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to revive a program that would allow companies to experiment with new forms of disclosures without facing regulatory penalties. The CFPB could allow for disclosure innovation without giving up its enforcement and oversight tools, Scott Astrada, the director of federal advocacy at the Center for Responsible Lending, told Bloomberg Law in a Sept...

On this tenth anniversary of the financial crisis, there have been many retrospectives on the US government’s response to that catastrophe, with more to come. The commentary to date has largely focused on the extraordinary measures taken to prevent a much deeper collapse of the American and global economies. Measures were implemented to address the immediate crisis and reduce the...

For many students, the path toward enrolling in a for-profit college starts with an advertisement—maybe while browsing online or watching a favorite television show. Either way, the message is usually the same: Get off the couch and do something with your life. The ads feature compelling and relatable stories: A young—or perhaps middle-aged—African-American stuck in a dead-end job and looking...

Lawsuits filed by homeowners, city governments and nonprofits like the American Civil Liberties Union accuse Wall Street banks of targeting African-American and Latino customers with predatory loans leading up to the financial crisis. “In many ways, we had a dual credit market where they were just getting pushed into the riskier side of the market, and a lot of that...

A round-up of recent news related to the Military Lending Act: The effort to roll back financial protections for military servicemembers by weakening the Military Lending Act has garnered lots of press attention. It’s in military-heavy states, in military focused outlets, in national outlets, inside-the-beltway, and in finance-focused outlets. State/Local News EDITORIAL Greensboro (NC) News and Record: Let's not drop...

Listen to an interview with Lisa Stifler on the Steve Gruber Show about the dangers of payday loans. Lisa also discusses some of the research findings in CRL's new report, Power Steering: Payday Lenders Targeting Vulnerable Michigan Communities.

Although an increasing number of states has passed laws to protect consumers by capping interest rates on payday loans, lenders have found creative ways to get around those regulations and issue loans with sky-high rates. “We see payday lenders utilizing schemes just to get out from as many kinds of restrictions as they can,” said Diane Standaert, director of state...

Groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Center for Responsible Lending, and the Consumer Federation of America have endorsed the bill.