CRL in the News

Two years since its launch in the U.S., Amazon Cash, Amazon’s reloadable prepaid card, faces adoption hurdles. The payment method initially rolled out as a feature to help unbanked or underbanked customers (those who don’t have bank accounts or don’t rely on their bank accounts for a majority of their transactions) shop on Amazon. To use Amazon Cash, customers log into their Amazon accounts and get a personalized barcode that they can use as a debit card to shop online and reload at participating physical stores. Now, Amazon has other plans in the works: Amazon Cash is being touted as part of

In the waning days of the Obama administration, Deutsche Bank made a series of unusually frank admissions in a U.S. court filing. The German bank acknowledged that during the housing boom it made intentionally false representations to buyers of its mortgage-backed securities, concealing the actual risks from purchasers of the bonds. It lied, for example, about borrowers’ credit scores. It also lied about the amount of equity that borrowers held in their homes. Banks typically do not fess up to deliberate wrongdoing, and when they do, their language is usually more equivocal than it was here

WASHINGTON, D.C. — (RealEstateRama) — The Senate confirmed Mark Calabria as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) –the federal regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – led by acting director Joseph Otting since early January. Calabria, who has served as chief economist for Vice President Mike Pence, was nominated to head the FHFA by the Trump Administration in December 2018.

College-sponsored bank accounts ding students with millions of dollars in fees each year, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Education Department under President Donald Trump never published the analysis but advocacy groups recently obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request. The bureau reviewed 573 colleges across the country with marketing agreements with banks. It found that 1.3 million students attending these colleges had open and active accounts with their colleges’ account providers. Students using accounts at these schools paid more

They are pricey, pesky and often designed to catch you off guard when you can least afford them. Checking and savings account fees can add to the cost of closing a bank account or force a low account balance into the negatives. So what bank fees should you be looking out for? And how can you avoid them if your bank levies these fees? Here are seven annoying bank fees and how to avoid them.

Stephen Marley comes from music royalty. Sean Garrett has written and produced smash hits for Beyoncé, Usher and Ciara. Even so, when they and hundreds of lesser-known names in the world of hip-hop and rap needed cash, one Wall Street figure emerged as an unlikely source behind the financing: hedge-fund titan Jamie Dinan. In a few short years, Sound Royalties, a West Palm Beach firm started within a unit of Dinan’s York Capital Management, has become ubiquitous in the music industry. Proudly billing itself as “artist friendly,” it offers cash advances to musicians, who often have to tide

As the Brookings report authors — Robin Howarth and Lisa Stifler of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending — note, a 1998 change to the Higher Education Act opened the door to colleges enrolling more than half of their students in online programs. Seeking cost-efficiency, scale and the chance to reach more adult students, for-profits were early adopters. Today for-profits are still orienting more and more online, but they are not alone. Public and private nonprofit universities have joined the field. Arizona State and Southern New Hampshire universities are already established online

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Debt is a major challenge for some Washington families, and measures moving through the Legislature could give them a bit of relief. House Bill 1602 would cap the interest rate companies can charge on consumer debt collection after winning a court judgment at 9 percent. The current rate is 12 percent – the highest in the nation. The bill would also increase consumer protections when wages are garnished.

This report addresses the trend of for-profit colleges going exclusively online or contracting with non-profit (mostly public) colleges to run their online programs. Using results from focus groups of for-profit student borrowers, Robin Howarth and Lisa Stifler explore the risks that this rapid shift entails for students already vulnerable to poor outcomes. The Department of Education is seeking to weaken accountability for distance education (online) providers that enroll students across wide geographies. This approach will increase risks for students and the federal student loan program. The

We all have heard the numbers about escalating student loan debt across the country. Maine is no exception. Residents of our state carry more than $6 billion in education debt. Excessive student debt takes money out of Maine’s economy. MECEP’s analysis indicates that education debt held by Mainers could support 6,000 jobs and three-quarters of a billion dollars in consumer spending if it were circulating through Maine’s economy instead of being sent to federal lenders and loan servicers. Research by MECEP shows the $6 billion in student debt also keeps Mainers from buying homes and saving for