Press Releases

Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection hosted a field hearing in Wilmington, DE to discuss proposed regulations for prepaid cards – including how overdraft fees and other credit features should be handled on these prepaid products. Maura Dundon of the Center for Responsible Lending offered the following remarks: The CFPB's proposed rule on prepaid cards, announced at a Wilmington field...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Citing biblical prohibitions against unjust lending, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Baptist Convention USA, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and clergy from over 20 states will join together at Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C. to call for strong federal regulation against predatory payday lending. The assembly will...

On Veterans Day, Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth will send a letter to Department of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, urging him to extend consumer protections for active duty service men and women. Ken Edwards, vice president of federal affairs at the Center for Responsible Lending, comments on Rep. Duckworth's push to protect service members: All Americans agree that taking advantage of service...

As the nation marks Veterans Day tomorrow, leaders from Center for Responsible Lending and the California Reinvestment Coalition are urging California state legislators and the state's members of Congress to follow the lead of the Department of Defense and honor veterans by passing legislation reining in abusive payday lending. The Department of Defense recently issued new proposed rules to update...

For more information, contact Andrew High at Andrew.High@responsiblelending.org or 919-313-8533.

In a letter sent today to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, a group of civil rights and economic justice organizations, including the Center for Responsible Lending, asked the Bureau to use its regulatory authority to curtail discretionary auto dealer interest rate markups. Court cases and enforcement actions over two decades have shown dealer markups result in racial discrimination...

Today, the US Department of Education released the final "gainful employment" rule imposing new limits on career education programs with poor outcomes for graduates. The final rule, which only considers the outcomes of the minority of students who graduate, is significantly weaker than the proposed rule. Nevertheless, it provides some important new protections. Maura Dundon, senior policy counsel at the...

On September 22, 2014, financial regulators including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Housing Finance Agency and Housing and Urban Development, issued final rules to define a Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM). The new rules are meant to define the risk retention rules for lenders as called...

CRL California Director Paul Leonard and California Representative Maxine Waters. Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) staff and consumer advocates based in Los Angeles gathered on October 10 to spotlight the threat posed by Predatory Payday Lending. A CRL analysis showing payday lenders rely on repeat borrowers to generate 76% of their revenue was released in advance of the meeting. The...

A Center for Responsible Lending analysis of two new reports on the payday lending industry from the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) shows that payday lenders, who advertise their products as a one-time quick fix for consumers facing a cash crunch, generate 76% of their revenue from borrowers who take out 7 or more loans per year. The DBO's...