A recent report from the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) revealed that that the passage of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD Act) did not negatively affect consumer access to credit card offers, as some predicted it would. Using data from Mintel Comperemedia, the CRL found that the neither the passage of the CARD Act nor its implementation caused a decline in the volume of new direct mail credit card solicitations. “Mail volume is up and has not suffered due to the CARD Act,” CRL senior researcher Josh Frank said in a video discussing the report. According to the report, the CARD Act’s implementation actually appears to “coincide with a period of rising mail volume” when adjustments for the recent economic downturn are factored in. “Mail volume has been rising since the CARD Act was passed and since the CARD Act implementation,” Frank, who authored the CRL report, said. “There is no evidence that there has been a reduction in mail volume. In fact, the opposite has happened.” In addition to the overall volume of direct mail credit card offers increasing, CRL said, the number of different households receiving offers increased, as well. Since the beginning of 2009, the percentage of different households receiving at least one credit card offer increased from 40 percent to 60 percent. The CRL report noted that increasing transparency with credit card pricing (as a result of the implementation of the CARD Act) is actually spurring competition and is likely to lead to lower costs for consumers.
