Testimony & Comment Letters
FinRegLab Responds to the CFPB’s Proposed Rule on Personal Financial Data Rights
Over the past three decades, customer-permissioned data flows have become critical to a growing range of consumer financial products and services as well as to public research focusing on household financial health, markets for consumer financial products and services, and the role of consumer financial activity in the nation’s economy.
FinRegLab is extending its investigation of the adoption of artificial intelligence in financial services through a policy analysis focused on the growing use of machine learning models for underwriting credit and a January 17 webinar with senior federal financial regulators to discuss generative AI and other recent developments.
Melissa Koide participated in a panel on artificial intelligence.
CEO Melissa Koide served as a witness on Wednesday, September 20, 2023 before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing on “Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services.” She shared learnings and insights from FinRegLab’s work on ML/AI, based on our research and policy and market dialogue regarding fairness, inclusion, and explainability in machine learning in credit underwriting.
FinRegLab is launching an initiative with support from the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to improve credit access for minority-owned companies and other underserved small businesses through the use of non-traditional data sources and mission-based lenders.
A new research paper underscores the importance of evaluating whether the most vulnerable and distressed borrowers need longer term repayment plans soon after they first enroll in natural disaster or other emergency relief programs with credit card lenders.
FinRegLab has issued two papers that examine lenders’ ability to build, understand, and manage machine learning models to ensure that they can be trusted to underwrite applications for credit by millions of consumers and small businesses.
Testimony & Comment Letters
FinRegLab Responds to the CFPB’s Outline on Personal Financial Data Rights Rulemaking
These data flows are critical to a growing range of consumer financial products and services. Modernizing the regulatory frameworks governing these flows is important both to mitigate current risks and frictions and to encourage future applications that produce greater inclusion, competition, and customer-friendly innovation, particularly for historically underserved consumers.
A new study finds that more consumers obtained short-term payment relief on their credit cards during the first 18 months of the pandemic than on any other type of loan except student debt, where forbearances were mandated by federal law. The study also finds evidence that pandemic relief initiatives may have reduced damage to the credit reports of consumers who sought long-term assistance through credit counseling and debt management programs.
FinRegLab has launched a new research project using data from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) to evaluate ways to help consumers recover more quickly from personal and economic crises such as COVID-19. The project will analyze pilot initiatives by nonprofit counseling agencies and other data sources as a springboard for considering broader market and policy changes.