Research

CRL shares stories of everyday people affected by financial abuse and emphasizes the need for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to ensure that they and others are protected from such abuses in the future. The Dow closes at 10,000 points, putting it back to where it was a year ago when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and Wall Street rejoices. But the...

October 20, 2009 Members, Financial Services Committee U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20510 Dear Representative: As the Financial Services Committee prepares to continue its markup of H.R. 3126, we write to express our support for a strong, non-preemptive Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). In this regard, we call your attention to two issues that are expected to come up...

Banks and credit unions skim cash from accounts through unfair overdraft practices Rather than discouraging customers from overdrawing their accounts, the system most banks and credit unions now use creates additional overdrafts and maximizes the number of fees they can charge. CRL finds that bank fees for overdrafts increased 35 percent in two years, rising to nearly $24 billion per...

How has your state fared in the financial crisis? These state-by-state fact sheets show some of the major costs of bad lending in recent years. They include delinquencies and foreclosures, the cost of bank overdraft loans and, where applicable, the cost of payday lending. We also include data showing the share of high-rate (subprime) mortgages made by national banks that...

A report by the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina provides evidence that allowing national banks to ignore state lending laws encouraged these banks to increase subprime lending, and that states with stronger lending laws have had lower foreclosure rates. [1] The study analyzes lending patterns and loan performance before and after 2004, the year the...

The US House Financial Services Committee heard from 30 consumer groups including CRL via an October 6, 2009 sign-on letter about ongoing auto financing scams. The National Association of Car Dealers (NADA) is lobbying hard for exemption from the CFPA (HR 3126). CRL and its allies strongly urge Committee members to ensure that the proposed consumer protection agency has strong...

Today's overdraft practices are designed to drive up the fee revenue of banks and credit unions and not to discourage customers from overdrawing their accounts. Our report shows that fees are climbing very quickly and affecting millions of Americans every year. Over 50 million Americans overdrew their checking account at least once over a 12 month period, with 27 million...

By Debbie Gruenstein Bocian and Keith S. Ernst A working paper recently released by the Columbia Business School, "Liar's Loan? Effects of Origination Channel and Information Falsification on Mortgage Delinquency" [1] reported three main findings: (1) mortgages originated through brokers are more likely to become delinquent than similar mortgages made through retail channels; (2) mortgages with low levels of income...

An essential component of the Obama Administration's proposal for improving oversight of our financial system would correct the current lack of adequate consumer protection standards that has plagued our financial system, and imperiled our economy. A new Consumer Financial Products Agency ("CFPA") would implement sensible protections and make sure that companies follow them. In addition to mortgages, the CFPA would...

This latest report by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy found that in 2007 nearly $13 million were lost by working West Virginians through refund anticipation loans. Out of the nearly 77,000 West Virginians that used a RAL in 2007, nearly 60 percent of them were recipients of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a federal program designed to...