Issues
Consumers, especially low-wealth consumers, need safe, affordable transaction accounts to get paid, pay bills, and save. When these accounts carry high or unpredictable fees, consumers may see their income and savings eroded or lose access to the banking system entirely. Consumer protections designed to ensure that banking fees are predictable, proportional, and fair are necessary to encourage and preserve access to basic transaction accounts that help consumers achieve financial security.
Sub-Issue Areas
In our digital age, communications are especially vital to consumers who increasingly communicate with product and service providers as well as with friends and family. For CFA, it is essential that broadband communications are accessible to everyone, especially to those with less education and lower incomes. It is also important that these communications enjoy adequate consumer and privacy protections.
Competition helps ensure that consumers have a wide range of goods and services. Regulation helps ensure that these products meet standards of performance and safety and are marketed fairly, with pricing and other features that are understood by consumers. CFA supports the appointment of federal and state regulators who uphold their regulatory mandate and are adequately funded to carry out this mandate.
Consumers deserve fair treatment in the marketplace. CFA promotes consumer protection by advocating for strong laws and regulations, working for trade agreements that provide real benefits for consumers and do not weaken their rights, encouraging good business practices, supporting consumers’ ability to complain and obtain redress, and educating consumers about their rights and how to avoid fraud and abuse. CFA’s Consumer Protection Institute conducts research and brings experts together to address consumer protection issues.
Energy from electricity, oil, gas, and other fuels drives the modern world. This energy needs to be affordable, especially for lower income consumers, and environmentally benign. CFA focuses its efforts in this area on improving the efficiency of motor vehicles and appliances.
CFA conducts research and advocacy to promote a safer, healthier, and more affordable food supply. CFA also coordinates the Safe Food Coalition, which is dedicated to reducing the burden of foodborne illness in the United States by improving government food inspection programs.
CFA organizes the highly praised National Food Policy Conference, held each spring in Washington DC. The conference explores the top food and agriculture issues of the day with a diverse mix of policy makers, advocates, and scientists.
Access to safe and affordable mortgage credit is a critical component of consumers’ household balance sheets, sense of home and security, and ability to build wealth. It is also vital for the long term health of our communities. CFA supports and advocates for strong federal regulation of the financial sector to protect consumers from unfair or predatory mortgage lending practices; to assure that all financial institutions respond to the full range of credit needs in the communities they serve through both deposit and lending services; and to assure stable and liquid mortgage funding for both homeownership and rental housing options.
Consumers spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on car, home, and life insurance products whose complexity and individual pricing permit insurer inefficiency and abuse. A large majority of the state insurance departments that regulate these insurers have neither the resources nor the will to do so adequately. CFA works to improve the effectiveness of this regulation and, where appropriate, supports federal interventions.
The millions of Americans who rely on investments to fund their retirement or other life goals are entitled to a marketplace that provides them with a choice of appropriate investments and service providers, the information necessary to make informed choices, protection against fraud and abuse, and effective recourse when they are victims of wrong-doing. CFA works to achieve those goals.
Consumers have a fundamental right to the privacy and security of their personal information. These rights extend to collection and control of personal data, limits on commercial and government surveillance, prohibition of discriminatory data practices, and safeguards for consumers’ personal information from unauthorized exposure and use. CFA promotes consumers’ privacy rights by advocating for strong laws and regulations, encouraging fair and effective data practices, and supporting vigorous enforcement to curb privacy abuses.
CFA’s product safety advocacy centers on products regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), especially those affecting children. Our work focuses special attention on the priorities and effectiveness of the CPSC — its budget, authority, and leadership — and on voluntary and mandatory standard-setting.
Financial institutions should offer consumers, especially those from low- and moderate-income households, savings opportunities that help them build wealth to meet emergencies, purchase a home and education, and afford retirement. Federal and state agencies should promote, facilitate, and sometimes require these opportunities.
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Founded in 1968 by pioneering consumer advocates to strengthen the consumer voice in the nation’s capital, CFA is recognized today for persuasive and enlightening research, innovative approaches to consumer education, and policy-changing advocacy on a wide range of consumer pocketbook, protection, and safety issues.
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Events
Fighting for Consumers in an Era of Deregulation
About the Event
Each year, Consumer Federation of America’s Consumer Assembly serves as the consumer movement’s principal meeting where issues are debated and new initiatives are presented. Since the Assembly’s inception in 1967, thousands of consumer activists and representatives of cooperatives, trade unions, business, government, and the press have participated in this annual conference.
Each year in June, CFA honors individuals and organizations who have made significant contributions to advancing the consumer interest. Award recipients are selected by CFA’s Board of Directors.
For over 50 years the Consumer Federation of America has worked to advance the consumer interest on a wide range of issues central to the health, safety, and financial well-being of consumers. Our success over the years would not have been possible without the efforts and support of allies in government, media, and other consumer organizations who have fought to advance pro-consumer policies, shined a spotlight on consumer abuses, and joined us in the campaign to right consumer wrongs. CFA has recognized these champions with presentations of the Philip Hart Public Service Award, Esther Peterson Consumer Service Award, Consumer Champion Award, Lifetime Achievement Award, and Betty Furness Consumer Media Honors.
The National Food Policy Conference is a key national gathering for those interested in agriculture, food and nutrition policy.
The National Food Policy Conference is a key national gathering for those interested in agriculture, food and nutrition policy. It explores the critical food policy issues of the day with an unusually diverse mix of policymakers, advocates and scientists. Major speakers include cabinet members and leaders on food and agriculture policy on Capitol Hill.
The Financial Services Conference is a key national gathering for consumer advocates and educators interested in new products and regulation which continue to transform the consumer financial services marketplace.
Federal and state policy makers and regulators continue to address pressing banking, insurance, investment, and real estate issues affecting consumers, after more than two decades of financial services deregulation and reregulation. To keep consumer advocates and educators informed about these issues, the Consumer Federation of America presents an annual conference on financial services, planned with the assistance of consumer groups and the financial services industry.
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is an association of non-profit consumer organizations that was established in 1968 to advance the consumer interest through research, advocacy, and education. Today, nearly 250 of these groups participate in the federation and govern it through their representatives on the organization’s Board of Directors.
Director of Housing
Senior Fellow
