Last month fair lending advocates cheered when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation proposed new guidance that would require banks under their supervision that offer bank payday or deposit advance products to comply with traditional safe and sound lending practices such as lending only after conducting proper underwriting and considering the borrower's ability to repay the loan.

The proposed rules are the culmination of hard work of advocates across the country at the local, state, and federal level. They could prevent millions of consumers from entering a debt trap, saving them thousands of dollars each year. But they also demonstrate a larger point: federal regulators can do great things when given effective leadership.

The Community Reinvestment Act has been instrumental in promoting investment and financial services in low- and moderate-income communities, but it hasn’t kept pace with changes in the financial industry. We have an opportunity today to let bank regulators know that it’s high time to update Community Reinvestment Act for the modern era. The regulators released proposed changes to their documents that implement CRA (called Interagency Questions and Answers).

We have until May 17 to comment on these proposed changes and let regulators know that they don’t go far enough, so please act today!

Bank regulators released proposed rules on April 30 that, at long last, would enact strong consumer protections for “deposit advance products”—essentially, payday loans offered by a mainstream bank. To hear it from the banks, making sure that borrowers can pay back loans and preventing an endless cycle of debt would somehow make consumers worse off (“Banking group says new regs could push consumers into risky payday loans,” April 28). 

The banks’ arguments are backwards. The fact is, regulators rightly propose to end  the worst practices of an industry that profits off trapping consumers in high-cost debt for long periods of time. Bank payday loans badly needed reform.

Things are different today than they were in 1973.

Unfortunately, the Community Reinvestment Act remains largely the same —and that’s a problem.

We need to update CRA to reflect the realities of the modern banking era. Instead of branch-based banking, many transactions take place online or through networks of brokers. CRA must be changed so that banks have community responsibilities wherever they do business, not just wherever they have branches. And we need stronger ways to hold banks accountable for providing important services--such as affordable checking accounts--to low-income communities.

CHICAGO—Woodstock Institute and Illinois PIRG delivered a message from over 7,000 residents of Illinois to Sen. Mark Kirk today: it’s time to stop the obstructionism and confirm Director Richard Cordray to a full term at the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The petitions were delivered as part of a national movement during which over 160,000 Americans signed a petition from Americans for Financial Reform asking members of Congress to confirm Cordray let the CFPB continue to do its job of protecting consumers.

We applaud President Obama’s nomination of Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Rep. Watt is a candidate with strong qualifications in economic policy who understands the issues facing consumers in the financial marketplace. Rep. Watt has served in Congress for 20 years and is a prominent member of the House Financial Services Committee, where he has advocated for affordable housing, fair lending, and consumer protections. In 2009, he co-sponsored the Credit CARD Act that enacted important protections for credit card borrowers.  

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently released information that makes it easier for the public to detect worrisome practices in financial services and assess whether financial institutions are adequately serving consumers.  The CFPB’s database is the largest public database of federal consumer financial complaints, providing information on over 90,000 complaints regarding particular financial institutions or financial products.

The database enables the public to see what types of products consumer complained about and how particular financial institutions responded. Products about which CFPB is currently collecting data include mortgages, student loans, credit cards, and other consumer loans. The database allows users to search, sort, and download information to conduct their own analysis, create visuals or reports, or embed on a different website. The database is updated on a daily basis and information is added after an institution has responded to a complaint or after it has had the complaint for at least 15 days.

CHICAGO—Proposed new guidance released today by two of the federal banking regulators could put an end to the worst practices of payday lending by  banks. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) proposed standards that the banks they regulate would have to comply with regarding what they call “deposit advance” features on bank accounts and reloadable prepaid cards.

The proposed standards require an assessment of the borrower’s eligibility for the product and financial capacity  to repay the loan and meet other financial obligations, limit the number of such loans borrowers can receive in one year, and mandate adequate management and monitoring of the significant safety and soundness risks posed by offering these high-cost, short-term loans.  The public has an opportunity to comment on the proposed guidance.

A staggering amount of support is pouring in from around the country calling on federal regulators to end payday lending practices by banks and through bank support. News reports indicate that prudential regulators will release guidance on Thursday strongly limiting bank payday.

Yesterday, our partners at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law authored a blog post demonstrating the large role banks play in these short-term, high-cost loans. Reinvestment Partners went further, identifying exactly how much banks are giving to fringe lenders.

Major federal policy decisions are so often made without consideration of what reality is like outside of the Beltway. One of our key goals at Woodstock is to make sure that the voices of people working on the ground in Illinois are heard by decision-makers in Washington, D.C. Our voices were heard loud and clear this year at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition annual conference, where we had the opportunity to take our priorities to bank regulators and 15 members of the Illinois Congressional delegation. We were joined by a delegation of nearly 30 Illinoisans from housing counseling agencies, community organizations, nonprofit developers, universities, and more.