Join us on Wednesday December 11 at 2:00 p.m. ET for More Efficiency, Less Risk: new facets to auto loan portfolio management, presented by Experian.

Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal published a story entitled “More Borrowers Are Going Underwater on Car Loans.” The story dramatizes the experiences of a handful of consumers who have refinanced their auto loan or rolled a previous loan balance onto a new loan, and how this activity has affected their financial outlooks.

The Military Times this morning published an op-ed from AFSA President & CEO Bill Himpler entitled On consumer credit and unintended consequences. The piece pushes back on an early op-ed arguing in favor of rate cap legislation. Himpler argues that policy proposals that advocate for rate caps have unintended consequences that are often ignored.

Read the full story in the Military Times.

As California’s fire fighters continue to contain the state’s wildfires, residents in Northern and Southern California have begun to return to those areas that have been deemed safe to pick up the pieces and rebuild what was lost. Insurance may cover some of the cost, but often those in the path of fires, hurricanes or tornadoes turn to AFSA member companies to help them get their lives back on track.

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Wednesday will host a symposium on Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act and “will provide a public forum for the Bureau and the public to hear various perspectives on the small business lending marketplace and the Bureau’s upcoming implementation of Section 1071.”

The American Financial Services Association participated in a session at the Association for Corporate Counsel’s annual meeting this week. The session, Call Me Maybe? The Financial Services’ Perspective on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, served to educate in-house counsel across all industry sectors about the latest trends, rules and considerations for communicating with customers, common violations, calls made to mobile phones, class actions, potential damages, company liability for third-party calls, particularly debt collectors, and other recent issues. The panel discussion was moderated by Prabir Chakrabarty, Vice President/Associate General Counsel with Mariner Finance.

In this edition of the AFSA CEO Update, Bill Himpler speaks about the key issues we learned about at the AFSA Annual Meeting and about how the association is responding back in Washington.

Bloomberg recently highlighted the online “payday lending” marketplace. While Bloomberg portrayed the type of loans as “installment loans,” they are a business model that leverages today’s online consumer culture that is very different from traditional installment lending.

AFSA’s State Government Affairs (SGA) team this week sent a comment letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in response to an opinion request from a state representative regarding the Texas Finance code. In the request, the representative asked the attorney general if a “credit services organization”, which is the state’s definition of payday and vehicle title lender, could extend forms of consumer credit beyond those explicitly authorized – namely deferred presentment or motor vehicle title loans. In the letter, AFSA strongly urged the attorney general to uphold the current interpretation of the Texas Finance Code, which maintains that credit services organizations should only be allowed to extend the forms of consumer credit that are explicitly authorized. Unlike credit services organizations, AFSA members are regulated and licensed by the Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner. Altering the existing interpretation of the Texas Finance Code by allowing unregulated and unlicensed credit services organizations to extend other forms of consumer credit will open the door to an increase in predatory lending practices in Texas.