The keynote speaker at AFSA’s Vehicle Finance Conference & Expo, Frank Luntz, was no where to be found at the start of his speech. Suddenly a familiar voice that has been on cable news air waves for over two decades, made his presence known from the back of the ballroom.

The American Financial Services Association kicks off its annual Vehicle Finance Conference with a focus on what makes our industry so crucial to our national economy: our diversity and our focus on empowering consumers. The Women’s Leadership Council and Law Committee met today to examine issues around ensuring that our industry reflects the customers and communities our members serve, while also ensuring that at the state and federal level pro-consumer policies are in place to ensure customers are protected and have access to the credit they need.

America has a significant underbanked and unbanked issue. Instead of supporting policies that protect consumers from predatory lenders like payday and vehicle title lenders, we have so-called consumer groups supporting policies with rigged polling data that would actually harm those who need access to credit in times of need. AFSA President, Bill Himpler, frames the right questions and how policy makers should be considering pro-consumer policies for access to credit.

The American Financial Services Association (AFSA) today released its 2020 Federal Priorities. America has a full history of evolving national consumer financial protection laws aimed at ensuring consumers are fairly and responsibly treated by financial institutions. Some 22 different federal laws, spanning eight different agencies, create a layered system of laws that protect consumers. The steady progression of these laws promotes a rich and diverse economy where consumers have tremendous choice in accessing a myriad of credit products from a wide variety of sources. As our economy continues to evolve, our consumer finance laws must account for the needs of both consumers and business. With an eye toward improving our existing system, we offer the 2020 Federal Priorities to strengthen and improve the marketplace for today’s consumers.

Yesterday, February 5th, AFSA staff attended the House Financial Services Committee’s first of two hearings entitled, “Rent-A-Bank Schemes and New Debt Traps: Assessing Efforts to Evade State Consumer Protections and Interest Rate Caps.” The second is scheduled for February 26th.

The American Financial Services Association, joining a number of other trade associations representing a wide variety of industries, submitted a letter on February 5 to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging it to clarify its definition of automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) found in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The AFSA Pulse initiative is moving forward with active engagement from several large auto finance companies. We are very excited about developing and refining the service to support AFSA Members and the association. With your input and guidance, we have built new data views including Marketing Data and Maps. This adds a whole new dimension to the platform to evaluate current and new markets while reducing reliance on other third-party data sources.

Today’s connected cars and tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles demonstrate the commercial opportunities for collecting personal data. The questions: Who should control the use of that data? The company or the customer?

White Clarke Group is February’s Featured Partner.

The American Financial Services Association is disappointed that Members of the House last night (January 29) approved H.R. 3621, “The Comprehensive CREDIT Act”, which actually harms the very consumers Congress claims to be trying to help by further empowering unscrupulous credit-repair organizations and the plaintiffs’ bar.