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The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will promote competition and scrutinize the outsized influence Big Tech firms have in the marketplace, its director told the Senate Banking Committee during a hearing on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Rohit Chopra, who was sworn in as CFPB director in October, fended off attacks from Republicans over his role in a regulatory spat. He is planning initiatives that will identify ways to lower barriers to entry and expand the pool of firms competing for customers based on quality, price, and service, he said. "We are especially interested in ways that small financial institutions can leverage technology and systems ... to capture market share while still preserving their relationship banking model," Chopra told lawmakers. In October, just a few weeks into the job, Chopra made his mark by ordering Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. to hand over information about how they gather and use consumer payment data, citing that there were many places where regulators should be promoting competition and innovation to benefit small businesses and families — not just the firms. On Tuesday, he provided the first update on what his scrutiny will yield. He also committed to propose a rule on open banking and small business lending data which will be issued in a "timely fashion." Open banking allows third-party internet-based applications to compete with big banks by accessing a customer's accounts to make payments, among other services.

Democrats are pressing the Department of Education for more information about plans to address the status of borrowers in default once federal student loan payments resume in the coming weeks, The Hill reported. The agency earlier this month said it would allow borrowers with paused loans to receive a “fresh start” when resuming payments “by eliminating the impact of delinquency and default and allowing them to re-enter repayment in good standing.” The agency said that the move would be carried out as part of its efforts to help borrowers transition more “smoothly” into repayment, after federal student loan payments and interest accrual were paused for more than two years under a pandemic freeze. In a letter to the agency led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), among others, the lawmakers said the move could “provide significant relief to millions of borrowers, particularly those who have most struggled with repaying their loans.” But the lawmakers pressed for more information about the steps the agency plans to take in rolling out the plan as well as protecting borrowers “who have been in default for an extended period of time.” The Federal Student Aid office characterizes a loan account as delinquent the first day after a borrower misses a payment. When an account remains delinquent, the borrower risks going into default, which can deal a significant blow to their credit rating and lead to a host of other consequences.

The Biden administration said it plans to make it easier for lower-income student-loan borrowers to get debt forgiveness through an existing program that has enrolled millions of people, but provided few with relief, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move, announced by the Education Department on Tuesday, is part of a politically sensitive debate on the forgiveness of student-loan debt and attempts to more broadly overhaul how the student-loan repayment system works. President Biden earlier this month extended to Aug. 31 a pandemic-related pause on payments of federal student loans and faces pressure from progressive members of his own party to forgive debt on a larger scale. The changes would apply to an income-based program for repaying student loans, allowing around 3.6 million people — nearly 10% of all student-loan borrowers — to receive at least three years of credit toward eventual debt forgiveness. The program, referred to as income-driven repayment plans, permits borrowers to pay a certain percentage of their income on loans for 20 to 25 years and have the rest of their balances forgiven. Loan servicers play a key role in how borrowers navigate their repayment options. Borrowers and members of both parties in Congress have criticized the program as broken. A 2021 study of government data found that just 32 borrowers out of eight million enrolled in the program successfully had their debt forgiven after decades of payments. The program has existed since 1992. “Today, the Department of Education will begin to remedy years of administrative failures that effectively denied the promise of loan forgiveness to certain borrowers,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

Pessimism about the economy has been on the rise due to surging inflation and falling household income since pandemic-related stimulus programs expired. But the latest round of bank earnings shows that apprehension hasn’t kept Americans from reaching for their credit cards, the Wall Street Journal reported. First-quarter spending was up 23% on Citigroup Inc. credit cards, compared with a year ago. Spending rose 29% on JPMorgan Chase & Co. cards and 33% on Wells Fargo & Co. cards. Bank of America Corp., another big card issuer, is scheduled to report first-quarter results Monday. Consumers are sending mixed signals about their confidence in the economy, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive David Solomon said Thursday. In some ways, the quarter was a return to prepandemic buying habits: At JPMorgan, spending totaled $236.4 billion, 37% higher than in the first quarter of 2019 and up 59% from its 2020 nadir. Bank executives pointed to higher spending on categories like travel, entertainment and dining as evidence of consumer strength. On Chase cards, travel and dining spending on rose 64% in the first quarter.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday said President Biden’s use of executive action to cancel some federal student loan debt is “still on the table” and that a “decision” could be made in the coming months, The Hill reported. “Yes, still on the table, still on the table,” Psaki could be heard saying to apparent cheers from the audience attending the live podcast, which was released by the platform on Friday. She then pointed to the Aug. 31 deadline for when the freeze on student loan debt payments and interest accrual is set to lapse, saying: “We have to then decide whether it’s extended.” “Nobody’s had to pay a dollar, a cent, anything in student loans since Joe Biden has been president,” Psaki said. “And if that can help people ease the burden of costs in other parts of their lives, that’s an important thing to consider. That’s a big part of the consideration.” Between now and the end of August, Psaki said that the moratorium is “either going to be extended or we’re going to make a decision about canceling student debt.”

Small groups of neighborhood volunteers are blocking companies from buying single-family homes, rewriting homeownership rulebooks to thwart investor purchases of suburban housing, the Wall Street Journal reported. These groups, called homeowner associations, spend much of their time enforcing rules related to things such as lawn care and parking. But they often have broad powers to regulate how homes are used. Some of these associations now believe that the rise in home purchases by rental investors has led to a decline in property maintenance and made their neighborhoods less desirable. Investors are also making it more difficult for local families to buy houses, these groups say. Homeowner tactics include placing a cap on the number of homes that can be rented in a particular neighborhood, or requiring that rental tenants be approved by the association board. In most cases, associations need at least a two-thirds majority to pass these measures. Investor purchases have been rising in recent years and accounted for more than one in five home sales in December, according to housing research firm CoreLogic. Their effect on the housing market and local neighborhoods has become a hot-button issue across the country. Home prices have also risen at historically high rates during the pandemic, and would-be buyers say they have a hard time competing with companies that pay in cash. Some housing analysts say that blocking investors from neighborhoods could end up hurting renters, who are often less wealthy than their homeowner counterparts or who struggle to find affordable housing. “There’s a pretty deep and pervasive social stigma against renters,” said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The Biden administration is working to expand forgiveness of student loans of students who successfully claim they were defrauded by schools, a key component of its piecemeal approach to reducing educational debt, the Wall Street Journal reported. For-profit colleges worry that the administration could make it too easy to apply for and obtain loan forgiveness, potentially damaging the schools’ reputations and forcing some to close. President Biden’s Education Department has canceled, or discharged, around $2 billion in federal debt held by tens of thousands of former students of for-profit colleges using a regulation known as borrower defense to repayment, after it determined that the schools had deceived the students about their job prospects, broken state consumer-protection laws, or otherwise harmed them financially. Most of the schools have since shut down. The department promises more such discharges as it streamlines the process and works through a backlog of more than 150,000 claims for debt relief under the program, many of which have sat unaddressed for several years.

Rent prices in February hit a new high with a national average of $1,792 in the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the country, marking an over 17 percent increase from this time last year, The Hill reported. The report from Realtor.com indicated that the spike in rent prices followed a notable dip in 2020 and into 2021 amid COVID-19–related rent deals. But now an increase in prices has been seen and felt in cities across the country. In New York City, median rental prices increased by 23.5 percent in Manhattan, over 10 percent in Brooklyn and 14.5 percent in northwest Queens in February compared to rates from last year, a report from New York City real estate company Douglas Elliman found. On the West Coast, rent prices in Seattle were up by almost 19 percent in April compared to April 2021. The median price for a one bedroom apartment in Seattle was $1,681, and it was $2,097 for a two bedroom, according to a report from Apartment List. Some increases seen in the middle of the country were slightly lower than in other cities, but they were substantial nonetheless. In Chicago, April rent prices were up 12.5 percent compared to the same time last year, with a one bedroom apartment costing $1,285 per month on average, according to Apartment List.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) yesterday sued TransUnion and one of its former executives, accusing the credit reporting agency of tricking consumers into making recurring payments after being fined in 2017 for similar activity, Reuters reported. The CFPB's lawsuit, filed in federal court in Illinois, accuses John Danaher, who headed one of TransUnion's subsidiaries, of failing to ensure that the company stopped the deceptive activity. The suit seeks monetary relief for consumers, injunctive relief and fines. "TransUnion is an out-of-control repeat offender that believes it is above the law," CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. "I am concerned that TransUnion's leadership is either unwilling or incapable of operating its businesses lawfully." The company in a statement called the CFPB's claims "meritless." Danaher left TransUnion in 2021, according to the CFPB. In its complaint, the CFPB said TransUnion failed to address shortcomings identified in a 2017 enforcement action under which the company paid $16.9 million to settle charges that it deceptively marketed its products, tricking customers into recurring-payment products and making canceling them difficult. The CFPB said that Danaher, who headed a subsidiary called TransUnion Interactive, sought to delay compliance with the 2017 order to try to boost revenue.