CRL in the News

A dozen advocacy groups, led by the Center for Responsible Lending, wrote to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in August, urging them to curb the deal over the amount TD collects in overdraft fees.

The Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice policy think tank, and the National Consumer Law Center, along with 27 other organizations, including the Center for Responsible Lending, and Southern Poverty Law Center, signed the letter. It explained that incarcerated people are often hit with fees for phone calls and messaging services, electronic monitoring and post-arrest diversion programs.

“Saying that people who are in hard financial straits need access to this kind of credit is sort of like giving a starving person rotten food,” Whitney Barkley-Denney, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, told The Intercept. “It makes them sicker than they were in the first place. People who borrow with payday loans find themselves facing...

“Student loan debt is both a product of the racial wealth gap and a tool that exacerbates racial inequality,” said Jaylon Herbin, director of federal campaigns at the Center for Responsible Lending.

At least three federal agencies have also taken action over the past two years to reduce junk fees and increase transparency. That includes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has ramped up its oversight of surprise overdraft and depositor fees charged by banks. The Center for Responsible Lending has hailed the move as "a big step" in highlighting the harms...

“Despite recent progress in addressing overdraft fees, the job is far from complete. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took a big step by banning surprise overdraft fees,” Nadine Chabrier, the Center for Responsible Lending’s senior policy counsel, said in a statement. “We are encouraged that the consumer bureau announced it will take additional steps, and we urge the bureau to...

Jaylon Herbin, director of federal campaigns at the Center for Responsible Lending, said borrowers need to stay in constant contact with their loan servicer, which may have changed. "During the beginning of 2022, federal student aid took on new contracts for servicers," Herbin pointed out. "It used to be Navient and Sallie Mae. So you should have been receiving those...

The Center for Responsible Lending released a report this year that showed economic gaps and underfunding at HBCU’s push students to take on a disproportionate amount of debt. This keeps graduates from adding to their net worth later in life, the report said.

Repaying buy now, pay later purchases with credit cards isn’t any better, even though some do it. “This practice — essentially using a credit card to pay off other debt — is a sign of inability to repay,” according to the Center for Responsible Lending and other groups in a March 2022 joint report.

“I will never forget going to Gallup on my way to the Navajo reservation and seeing just store after store after store of predatory lenders lined up tip to tail all the way to the border with Arizona,” said Whitney Barkley-Denney, a deputy director of state policy and a senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending. “I think...