Protecting Main Street

Paul C. Lubin has more than 30 years experience measuring and improving the customer experience. He owned and operated one of leading financial services market research firms in the country, Barry Leeds and Associates and has worked for the leading financial institutions in America. He pioneered the use of market research to detect discrimination and unfair sales practices in consumer lending and developed self-testing testing programs for financial institutions facing allegations of discrimination and unfair sales practices. In the early 1990's, he pioneered the use of Mystery Shopping and Matched Pair Testing to detect discrimination in lending. In the early to mid-1990’s he developed a method to test for discrimination through customer feedback and coined the phrase "post-application test." The procedure is considered a valid self-test for discrimination by federal regulatory agencies. At the same time he pioneered the use of Mystery Shopping to examine non-deposit investment sales practices at banks. During the late 1990's and into the new century Paul created programs to detect predatory lending and misleading sales practices. In November 2007 he wrote and presented a paper Fair Lending Testing: Trends, Training and Best Practices at the Understanding Consumer Credit Symposium sponsored by the Joint Center for Housing at Harvard University. The paper is cited by Department of Housing and Urban Development as a source for methods used by financial institutions to detect discrimination and compliance with the law. In 2009 he prepared and presented a paper to the American Marketing Association Public Policy Conference titled Market Research for Detecting and Eliminating Racial Profiling in Consumer Lending.

List of Figures, Preface: Buyer Beware and Dealing with Imperfect Markets, 1 Consumer Lending and Self-Testing, 2 Self-Testing Methods to Measure Discrimination, Unfair Sales Practices, and the Customer Experience, 3 Steps in Designing and Analyzing a Self-Testing Program, 4 Fair Lending Testing, 1991–2009, 5 Measuring Fair Treatment of Consumers in the Credit Card and Debit Card Marketplace, 6 Measuring Fair Treatment of Consumers in the Investment Marketplace, 7 Epilogue, Notes, Index