In response to the economic hardships stemming from COVID-19, many U.S. card-issuing banks offered measures to assist their customers who were financially affected by the pandemic. Unlike previous disaster assistance programs that were typically short in duration and localized, the COVID-19...

Extant research shows that climate change can impose significant costs on consumers’ wealth and finances. Both sea-level rise and flooding from hurricane events led to high price declines and thus wealth loss for homes in coastal areas or in disaster-struck areas, with effects lingering for a...

Student loan servicers play a critical and underappreciated role in federal student oan programs. The federal government contracts out to servicers an array of many of the most critical functions related to student loan repayment, including account management, payment processing, and the...

The Consumer Finance Institute hosted a workshop in November 2018, featuring Paul Wilmore, then chief marketing officer of Barclays US, to discuss the Barclays Ring credit card program. Through the Ring online community, Barclays engages cardholders directly in the program management, sharing...

The Consumer Finance Institute hosted a workshop in February 2019 featuring José Quiñonez, chief executive officer, and Elena Fairley, programs director, of Mission Asset Fund (MAF) to discuss MAF’s approach to helping its clients improve access to mainstream financial markets....

The Consumer Finance Institute hosted a workshop in August 2018 featuring Michael Marx, senior director at Visa, Inc., to discuss recent data from the Visa Payment Panel, highlighting the evolution of consumer payment preferences since the Great Recession and the passage of the Credit Card...

Secured credit cards--credit cards whose limit is fully or partially collateralized by a bank deposit--are considered a gateway product to mainstream credit access. As consumers demonstrate good usage and repayment behavior, they may be offered the opportunity to graduate to an unsecured credit...

The Consumer Finance Institute hosted a workshop in February 2017 featuring James Fox, partner and principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and a leading authority on cybersecurity in the financial services industry. He discussed the importance of measuring cyber risk, highlighted some...

Medical research has linked financial vulnerability to accelerated cognitive aging — the process by which cognitive abilities decline with age. Consumers who understand the risks of cognitive aging and what their financial institutions are doing to detect and deter financial crimes are...

This recap of a January 2017 Payment Cards Center workshop conducted by Frank Martien of First Annapolis Consulting, Inc. (since acquired by and now part of Accenture) adds to the literature on conditions in the markets for consumer and commercial credit cards, and credit and debit cards use by...