Criticism
The main criticism among mainstream consumers has been that risk-based pricing can make 'shopping' for the best interest rates much more difficult. It is almost impossible to tell at first glance if one can be qualified to get an advertised rate or exactly what interest rate they qualify for at all. Consumer-rights advocates also believe that risk-based pricing in the extreme, especially in the form of predatory lending, hurts financially disadvantaged and vulnerable consumers by cutting them off from reasonably affordable capital and exposing them unwittingly to soaring interest rates and unsustainable financing schemes that erode equity and may lead to default. Risk-based pricing can be manipulated to wield deceptive marketing practices, such as the bait and switch. The fairness of similar lending practices within the mortgage industry is being investigated by the United States Congress. Some supporters of risk based pricing have suggested that it should be accompanied by heightened disclosure and transparency requirements and standardization of loan terms to facilitate comparison shopping and ameliorate these problems.
Read more about this topic: Risk-based Pricing
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)