Understanding Consumer Credit: A National Symposium on Expanding Access, Informing Choices, and Protecting Consumers

In 2007, the Center hosted Understanding Consumer Credit: A National Symposium on Expanding Access, Informing Choices, and Protecting Consumers, with the support of the Ford Foundation, Freddie Mac, and NeighborWorks America.

This symposium brought together leaders from the business, government, civic and academic sectors to examine the challenges of improving outcomes for consumers. These leaders also explored driving market efficiencies in the consumer credit system, while preserving the choice and access that borrowers with limited financial means and/or sub-par credit records now enjoy.

Read the Keynote Remarks by Julie L. Williams, Chief Counsel and 1st Senior Deputy Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

The book, Borrowing to Live: Consumer and Mortgage Credit Revisited features selected papers from the symposium.

The papers presented at the symposium are also available on our website:

• Consumer and Mortgage Credit at a Crossroads: Preserving Expanded Access while Informing Choices and Protecting Consumers (Eric S. Belsky and Ren S. Essene)
• Financial Decision Making Processes of Low-Income Individuals (Edna R. Sawady and Jennifer Tescher)
• Where Does it Go? Spending by the Financially Constrained (Shawn Cole, John Thompson and Peter Tufano)
• Fair Lending Testing: Best Practices, Trends and Training (Paul C. Lubin)
• The Legal Infrastructure of Subprime and Nontraditional Home Mortgages (Patricia A. McCoy and Elizabeth Renuart)
• Imperfect Information and the Housing Finance Crisis (Edward Golding, Richard K. Green and Douglas A. McManus)
• Enlisting Market Mechanisms to Police the Origination of Home Mortgages (Howell E. Jackson)
• The Impact of Credit Price and Term Regulations on Credit Supply (Michael Staten)
• The Impact of State Anti-Predatory Lending Laws: Policy Implications and Insights (Bostic, Engel, McCoy, Pennington-Cross, Wachter)
• Should Consumer Disclosures Be Updated? (Thomas A. Durkin)
• Financial Literacy: An Essential Tool for Informed Consumer Choice? (Annamaria Lusardi)
• Behaviorally Informed Home Mortgage Credit Regulation (Barr, Mullainathan, Shafir)
• Using Financial Innovation to Support Savers: From Coercion to Excitement (Peter Tufano and Daniel Schneider)
• Identifying, Managing and Mitigating Risks to Borrowers in Changing Mortgage and Consumer Credit Markets (Belsky, Case, Smith)
• Interventions in Mortgage Default: Policies and Practices to Prevent Home Loss and Lower Costs (Amy Crews Cutts and William A. Merrill)
• Looking Beyond Our Shores: Consumer Protection Regulation Lessons from the UK (Elaine Kempson)
• Consumer Protection in French and British Credit Markets (Gunnar Trumbull)