The Silver Star Families of America is dedicated to protecting Service members, both active duty and veteran, from financial transactions that may take an unfair advantage, is detremental, or actually illegal. We offer here some resources that may be of assistance.
A letter from Holly Petraeus
Hello and welcome from the Office of Servicemember Affairs!
We are here to see that military personnel and their families have a voice at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We understand that military life can have some extra challenges, such as deployment and frequent moves, and that those challenges can sometimes have powerful financial repercussions. We also know that there are businesses and scammers that target servicemembers with bad deals and outright rip-offs, and that there are other businesses that treat them well.
Our job is to make sure that the CFPB uses its powers to make markets work better so that they encourage good business practices and weed out bad ones.
The Office of Servicemember Affairs will ask CFPB bank and non-bank examiners to keep an eye out for military-specific issues. When we find out about people breaking consumer financial protection laws to harm servicemembers, we’ll help CFPB enforcement teams take action against them. And we plan to make it easy for military personnel and their families to contact the CFPB with questions or complaints about consumer financial products and services.
We also plan to work with the Pentagon to give military personnel and their families a really good financial education, so they can recognize a bad deal before they sign on the dotted line. To be sure that we cover the important issues, we’ll talk to them about their concerns and experiences. We want to hear from active duty, Guard, Reserve, retirees, family members, and veterans – the whole military community.
Our men and women in uniform should be able to do their jobs without having to worry about falling victim to unfair or deceptive financial practices. As a member of a military family, I understand what it’s like to face deployment and to move every few years. It’s my honor to represent the military community here at the CFPB, and to make sure that its concerns are heard – and that we do something about them.
Holly Petraeus
Office of Servicemember Affairs
